'It was horrible': Stranded Southwest passengers still waiting to recoup costs from airline meltdown

Only weeks after a Southwest Airlines meltdown led to thousands of canceled flights and stranded passengers, the nation's air travel system was briefly interrupted Wednesday due to an outage in the computer system used by the Federal Aviation Administration to give pilots vital information before they take off. While the FAA system was back online within hours and flights were slowly returning to schedule, those passengers whose lives were upended in last month's Southwest debacle are still feeling the effects of the meltdown and tallying up the financial damage they endured. Passengers who spoke to The Times said the fiasco cost them between $700 in one instance (for gas costs) and $70,000 in another (for a destination wedding that was ruined). "I am trying to be patient and give them a chance to make things right," said one of Southwest's stranded passengers, actor Deborah Rombaut. "What bothers me is that I don't have a timeline as far as when I'll be reimbursed." Thousands of holiday travelers like Rombaut were stranded late last month when Southwest Airlines said its computer system that tracked crew scheduling could not keep up with a severe winter storm.