Several major US airlines hit by flight check-in system outage

Customers across the U.S. reported airline computer issues at a number of airports.

A flood of tweets began to roll in a little after 11am ET (8am PT) about computer or network issues. Passengers on the ground said the issues related to the flight check-in systems and were unable to issue boarding passes.

A spokesperson for American Airlines confirmed the issue was with the Sabre flight reservation and booking system, used by several major airlines - including WestJet, Alaska Airlines and JetBlue, all of which had passengers reporting issues.

The airline spokesperson told TechCrunch that the "brief technical issue" was resolved after 11:40am ET, and apologized to customers. JetBlue later confirmed it was recovering from the outage. A Sabre spokesperson said, echoing a tweet, tweeted, that "recovery is in progress."

One passenger on the ground at Portland International Airport said there are "no flights taking off." Several other customers complained of outages and delays across the country.

Grounded: American Airlines telling PHX passengers that they have a systemwide outage related to their boarding system. *No flights taking off from any airport* #airlines #AA #travel #PHX cc: @thepointsguy

- Anthony Wanger (@AnthonyWanger) March 26, 2019

Sabre is one of a handful of flight reservation systems used by airlines around the world. Sabre, developed by Texas-based Sabre Holdings, provides service to more than 400 airlines and 220,000 hotels.

The company reported a significant data breach in mid-2017 affecting its hotel reservation system after hackers scraped millions of customer credit cards.

Updated with comment from JetBlue and Sabre, and that the outage is resolving.

Flaws in Amadeus' airline booking system made it easy to change passenger records