Jim McBarron, manager of station perations for Alaska Airlines, uses a bullhorn to try and find passengers for a flight that was about to take off for San Diego, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, during a system-wide outage of the computers the airline uses to check in passengers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. Most flights were delayed or canceled, but the airline was able to manually check in passengers for a few of its flights. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Jim McBarron, manager of station perations for Alaska Airlines, uses a bullhorn to try and find passengers for a flight that was about to take off for San Diego, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, during a system-wide outage of the computers the airline uses to check in passengers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. Most flights were delayed or canceled, but the airline was able to manually check in passengers for a few of its flights. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Alaska Airlines passengers wait in a long line near inoperable check-in computers, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle during a system-wide outage of the computers the airline uses to check in passengers. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Alaska Airlines passengers wait in a line near inoperable check-in computers, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle during a system-wide outage of the computers the airline uses to check in passengers. The computers Alaska Airlines uses to check in passengers stopped working at 7:40 a.m. Monday, causing long lines of frustrated passengers who were unable to board flights that were delayed. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Hand-written Alaska Airlines flight numbers and destinations is shown taped to a check-in station computer monitor with an error message, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle during a system-wide outage of the computers the airline uses to check in passengers. The airline was able to check in customers manually for a few flights, but most others were delayed or cancelled. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Crowds of Alaska Airlines passengers wait in long lines of the check-in area Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle during a system-wide outage of the computers the airline uses to check in passengers. Some flights were able to be checked in manually, but most flights were delayed or canceled. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
SEATTLE (AP) ? Alaska Airlines operations slowly were returning to normal Monday afternoon after a fiber-optic outage shut down its ticketing system for five hours, cancelling flights in Seattle and Los Angeles and causing delays across the airline's 64-airport network.
The problems started shortly before 8 a.m. when computers the airline uses to check in passengers went down, forcing employees to board travelers manually ? in some instances sticking handwritten flight numbers to computer monitors.
The biggest delays were at Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport, where about half the flights are Alaska Airlines or its regional airline Horizon Air.
Frustration grew along with the lines of passengers waiting to check in, though some travelers simply sat or lay down and waited. Lines stretched out the door in the Alaska Airlines part of the terminal.
Airline representatives apologized and said technicians were working as fast as possible to restore the connection to the company's Sabre reservation system.
No other airlines at Sea-Tac were affected by the problem, airport spokesman Perry Cooper said.
The outage forced a number of cancellations, including three flights out of Sea-Tac and three flights to Sea-Tac from Las Vegas, Ontario, Calif., and Orange County, Calif. At least two Los Angeles International Airport flights also were canceled.
Other locations that experienced delays included Alaska and Portland, Ore., Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Marianne Lindsey said.
All passengers who had their travel disrupted were told they could rebook without a rescheduling fee.
The problem was caused by a combination of two cut cables in Sprint's fiber-optic network. One occurred at a construction site along railroad tracks between Chicago and Milwaukee and the other was somewhere between Portland and Seattle, said Sprint spokeswoman Crystal Davis in Reston, Va.
"Typically if there's just one cut, traffic reroutes automatically," Davis said. "Because there were two cuts within hours of each other, it caused this disruption."
The Seattle-based Alaska Airlines is the seventh-largest U.S. airline based on passenger traffic and is the dominant U.S. West Coast air carrier. It has an average of 436 flights a day at 64 destinations, including airports in Mexico and Canada.
Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air are owned by the Alaska Air Group.
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