...And Their Luggage

It was as if the wintry weather across the nation didn't do enough to foul flight schedules. A massive computer hiccup at Delta subsidiary Comair grounded all of the airlines 1,100 Christmas Day flights, leaving thousands of passengers spending the holiday stuck in terminals from Salt Lake to Atlanta. At the same time, a suspiciously mystery illness among flight attendants and baggage handlers grounded 29 US Airways flights and caused a lost-luggage nightmare.

Comair Computer Crash

A massive computer problem grounded all Comair flights to all 119 destinations Saturday, a problem that probably won't be rectified until several days from now.

Sunday, Comair resumed a "limited" flight schedule, saying the number of flights will slowly increase as the week wears on "with anticipation they will be operating a full schedule by the end of the week," spokeswoman Tracey Bowden told CNN.

The company's dispatch computer went down late Christmas Eve after it was apparently "overwhelmed" by weather-related cancellations.

As many as 30,000 passengers were stranded as a result of the outage.

"The situation is still pretty fluid. Our goal is to operate as many flights as possible," said spokesman Nick Miller at the company's headquarters in Hebron, KY.

Suspicious Flu Strikes US Airways Workers

For US Airways, the worst of the weekend apparently began in Philadelphia, PA, where the weather outside was frightful and luggage was being lost by the flight-fulL. That, combined with a record number of US Airways passengers flowing through the terminals at Philadelphia International and an "unusually high level of sick calls" from baggage handlers and flight attendants, separated thousands from their luggage, said spokeswoman Amy Kudwa.

To fix the problem, US Airways sent a lot of the lost luggage to its Charlotte, NC, hub, hoping the move would help expedite the reunion between passengers and their bags. Flight attendants have threatened to strike if a federal bankruptcy judge agrees to allow the airline to abrogate labor contracts with its unions.

In spite of that, "We don't believe that we have an organized labor action on our hands," Kudwa told Reuters.

FMI: www.usairways.com, www.comair.com