About 2,500 international passengers were stranded for as long as five hours Saturday on planes and in terminals at Los Angeles International Airport because a computer shutdown prevented them from passing through customs, authorities said.
The passengers were stranded in four airport terminals and on runways starting at about 1:30 p.m. because of a breakdown in a computer system that contains names of arriving passengers and law enforcement data about them including arrest warrants, said Mike Fleming, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman.