Skip to content
Go to Home Page
News

Computer Systems Outage Briefly Disrupts Several Airlines

Michael Y. Park
Articles
Michael Y. Park is a senior contributing editor who’s written for The New York Times, Reuters, Bon Appetit and others. For TPG, he’s written about Air Force One, immigration and security, airline food and more.
March 26, 2019
•
2 min read
Airplanes at LAX
Computer Systems Outage Briefly Disrupts Several Airlines
This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. Terms apply to the offers listed on this page. For an explanation of our Advertising Policy, visit this page.
Sign up for our daily newsletter

A malfunction in a widely used system for selling tickets to airline passengers briefly fouled up flights and reservations Tuesday, but was fixed within minutes, according to reports.

Those affected including American Airlines, with further reports of problems at JetBlue and Alaska Airlines. The error seem to have originated with computer systems by Sabre, a Texas-based company.

“Earlier today, Sabre had a brief technical issue that impacted multiple carriers, including American Airlines," AA spokesman Ross Feinstein said in an emailed statement. "This technical issue has been resolved. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”

On Twitter just before noon, Eastern time, Sabre said it was working on a fix.

"We are aware of the issues facing some of our customers. Recovery is in progress. We apologize for the inconvenience."

It wasn't clear exactly how many people were affected, where the outages occurred or what exactly went wrong. A passenger's Twitter post at from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) complained of computers being down in the morning. At 8:35am, AA responded the post, apologizing for the "hiccup" and promising flights would soon be underway.

Alaska and JetBlue did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Featured image by Alberto Riva