Las Vegas airport lines caused by baggage check-in failure

Operations at Harry Reid International Airport returned to normal Thursday after an electrical problem knocked some of the airport’s baggage handling system offline for several hours Wednesday.

An undetermined number of passengers, mostly departing customers of Southwest and American airlines, faced long check-in lines at ticket counters Wednesday morning.

An airport official said an alternate baggage screening method was put in place for outbound bags. The impacted systems were back online and operating normally by 3 p.m.

Airport workers planned an outage to upgrade the system early Wednesday morning, but when the computerized system was rebooted, it failed.

A Southwest Airlines spokesman said he was unaware of any flight delays that resulted from the baggage system outage.

He said the airline worked with individual customers with their travel needs if they were affected by the situation to get them and their bags to their destinations as quickly as possible.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.