14 Hours Later, LAX Clears Last Stranded Passengers
Ari Bloomekatz, Rong-Gong Lin II, and Deborah Schoch write in The Los Angeles Times:
Thousands of international passengers stranded for hours on planes and in packed holding areas at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday have now cleared customs. But officials have not explained what caused a computer malfunction that left them unable to process the travelers' entry into the country.This article goes on to say that "The computer system maintains a list of people who should be subject to secondary searches upon entering the country..."
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection system went down around 2 p.m., forcing some planes to sit on the tarmac for so long that workers had to refuel them to keep their power units and air conditioning running. Maintenance workers ran trucks around the airport hooking up tubes to service lavatories.
Just after midnight Saturday, Tom Winfrey, a spokesman for Los Angeles World Airports, said the computer system was up and running. Processing passengers through customs took several hours after that.
More here.
posted by Fergie @ 8/12/2007 12:29:00 PM
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