DALLAS -- Southwest passengers endured a third straight day of canceled and delayed flights as the airline struggled to resume normal operations on Friday.

CHICAGO - APRIL 05: A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-3H4 passenger jet prepares to land at Midway Airport on April 5, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Southwest Airlines said it finished inspecting its grounded 737-300 series planes and of the nearly 80 planes five of them have cracks in the aluminum skin. The inspections come after Southwest Flight 812 had to make an emergency landing when a piece of its fuselage skin was torn while on its way from Phoenix to Sacramento. The discovery prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing to require emergency inspections on a portion of the 737 fleet manufactured during the 1980s and 1990s for the same fatigue cracks in the fuselage like the ones on the Southwest jets. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-3H4 passenger jet prepares to land at Midway Airport on April 5, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Tracking service FlightStats Inc. reported that by mid-afternoon about 300 Southwest flights had been canceled and 1,200 more delayed. Southwest canceled nearly 1,500 flights and 4,500 others were delayed Wednesday and Thursday.

Southwest Airlines Co. said it was managing through lingering disruptions. It said most of Friday's cancelations were due to airline crews being unable to get to their flights after being stranded in other cities.

The airline said that a computer router failure caused several technology systems to break down on Wednesday, and backup systems didn't work as expected. It said those systems were fully restored.

The timing of the breakdown -- in the middle of the summer travel season -- made rebooking stranded customers more difficult because planes were already nearly full.

Southwest recommended that passengers delay travel until after the weekend. It said that customers with tickets for travel from Wednesday through next Tuesday would get two weeks to rebook without paying a higher fare.

It also offered passengers half off their next flight on Southwest Airlines.

In an email to customers, President and CEO Gary Kelly called the failure "unacceptable" and said that the 50 percent discount is valid for any domestic travel when booked by Oct. 31 for travel through Jan. 31.

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