ALERT: Amadeus Back Online After Systems Crash Disrupts Airline Check-ins Worldwide (September 28, 2017)
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Alert – Amadeus: Systems Crash Disrupts Airline Check-ins Worldwide; System Back Online
Air passengers are suffering major disruption at airports around the world after Amadeus’ Altea computer check-in systems crashed. Amadeus IT Group tweeted moments ago: “Our systems are recovered and are now functioning normally.” More than 130 airlines worldwide use Amadeus’ Altea passenger-service system.
According to Bloomberg:
Airlines worldwide were forced to delay flights Thursday as a global flight-bookings system operated by Amadeus IT Group SA suffered what the company called a “network issue.”
Major carriers including British Airways, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. and Qantas Airways Ltd. were among those reportedly impacted by the outage. Singapore’s Changi airport said via Twitter that a technical issue affecting some operators was delaying the check-in process, with boarding passes having to be issued manually.
“Amadeus confirms that, during the morning, we experienced a network issue that caused disruption to some of our systems,” the Madrid-based company said in a statement. Technical teams took immediate action to identify the cause of the issue and services are “gradually being restored,” it said.
More than 130 airlines worldwide use Amadeus’s Altea passenger-service system, which helps manage flight reservations, inventory and departure-control capabilities, according to its website.
The company said it couldn’t comment on the extent of the disruption. Dublin airport said its systems were down for about 12 minutes, while Manchester in northern England reported a 15-minute failure. The knock-on effect on flights could have lasted much longer, based on previous outages.
Amadeus competes with Sabre Corp. and Travelport Worldwide Ltd., with the Spanish company the dominant bookings-systems provider in Europe.
CNN has confirmed that the following airlines and airports have been affected:
Airlines: Air France Southwest China Air Qantas Korean Air Lufthansa
Airports: Incheon, Seoul Haneda, Tokyo Charles de Gaulle, Paris Zurich Frankfurt Gatwick, London Heathrow, London
Amadeus said in a statement posted just after 9 a.m. ET, Thursday:
Amadeus can confirm that our systems are recovered and are now functioning normally. During the morning, we experienced a network issue that caused disruption to some of our systems. As a result of the incident, customers experienced disruption to certain services.
Our technical teams took immediate action to identify the cause of the issue and mitigate against the impact on customers.
Amadeus regrets any inconvenience caused to customers.
Sabre earlier sent a notice to users:
Amadeus Hosted carriers are experiencing connectivity issues. Sabre customers might receive pending status when trying to sell, Unconfirmed status (UC) when ending the record. They might also get ETR UNAVAILABLE responses when trying to display electronic tickets, or the error 999, when trying to issue tickets. This might affect Air France, Air Baltic, British Airways, Iberia, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, among other Amadeus airlines. This has been reported to Amadeus. We will update the bulletin when having further news.
Please contact the PR Team if you have any concerns: TravelLeadersGroupPR@TravelLeaders.com.