From Elaine Monaghan in Washington

THOUSANDS of Americans spent the Christmas weekend stranded at airports after computer glitches, freezing weather and staff shortages led to the cancellation of thousands of flights.

Passengers of Comair, a unit of Delta Air Lines, were especially hard hit after its systems crashed on Christmas Day, affecting flights to 119 cities. It resumed a “limited” flight schedule yesterday.

Cynthia Mayer, waiting to return home to Hilton Head, South Carolina, on a Comair flight from Cincinnati, lost both her flight and her luggage. She said that her earliest flight home would be late yesterday. “They offered me a toothbrush,” she said.

Comair’s computer woes affected 30,000 passengers, and flights were not expected to return to normal until later this week.

The financially troubled US Airways scrapped 29 flights yesterday after “an unusually high level of sick calls” from baggage handlers and flight attendants. Their problems started with severe weather that hit large sections of the country midweek and affected one of its main hubs particularly badly.

At Philadelphia International Airport, where a record number of 32,000 US Airways passengers had tried to take Christmas flights, miserable passengers milled around baggage halls strewn with luggage after handlers called in sick. US Airways had had to cancel 80 flights on Christmas Day and 176 flights on Christmas Eve.

Stupid baggage problems continued