Work crew mishap forces Northwest to cancel 120 flights

March 22, 2000
Web posted at: 11:39 AM EST (1639 GMT)

EAGAN, Minnesota (CNN) -- Northwest Airlines urged customers to check on their flights Wednesday, following a mishap with its flight communications system the day before.

The carrier canceled about 120 flights and delayed many others Tuesday after a construction crew accidentally cut a cable, shutting down its flight data communications system. No passengers in flight were in danger, it said.

Northwest remedied the problem more than three hours later, allowing service to resume at airports across the country. But by that time, thousands of passengers had been stranded, and the carrier said delays would ripple through the system into Wednesday morning.

The cancellations affected 48 flights from Northwest's two biggest hubs, Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Other flight cancellations were "scattered throughout the domestic system," said Jeff Smith, director of corporate communications. "We had a couple of flights to Europe affected."

Northwest is the world's fourth largest airline with 1,700 flights daily. It serves 260 cities in the United States alone.

"Our full operations will be back to normal tomorrow (Wednesday)," he added. "When you cancel that many flights in that period of time, obviously it will have cascading effects into the evening."

A construction crew working for McLeod USA, an Iowa-based telephone company, accidentally cut a US West fiber optic cable near the Twin Cities' airport that carried Northwest's flight data.

No plane may be cleared for takeoff without that information, which includes the weight and balance of the plane, number of passengers and amount of fuel.

The mishap also affected reservations and baggage information, the electronic ticketing system and the airline's Web site.

US West said it re-routed Northwest flight data information through another channel while it attempted to repair the cut line.

Northwest was "to investigate exactly what happened and to work closely with US West to make sure it won't happen again," Smith said.

McLeod officials have suggested that the cables were not properly marked. But US West officials disagree; they said the McLeod's contractor made a mistake.

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Northwest cable repaired
March 21 , 2000

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