American Airlines confirms res system outage not Sabre’s fault

All American Airlines’ US flights were put on hold for several hours yesterday after a fault with the carrier’s reservation system.

All American Airlines’ US flights were put on hold for several hours yesterday after a fault with the carrier’s reservation system.

At least 670 flights were cancelled before its systems were fully restored at 4.30pm local time.

But the airline warned travellers to expect “continued flight delays and cancellations throughout the remainder of the day”.

The carrier initially said its reservation system, managed by Sabre Holdings, a ticket distributor, was offline, but American later clarified that the problem was with its own access to the system, not with Sabre itself, the Financial Times reported.

The airline said passengers who needed to travel on Tuesday could rebook their flights, even on other airlines, and it would pay any fare difference.

American also said it would waive change fees and provide full refunds to customers who chose not to travel on Tuesday.

Earlier in the afternoon, the carrier had said its system was “experiencing intermittent outages”.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that American requested a “ground stop” of all flights at US airports.