US: Computer outage briefly grounds flights on several airlines

Travellers on several airlines had trouble checking in for flights and waited out delays Friday after a computer outage at a company that runs airline technology systems. American Airlines, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and Virgin America confirmed that a technology glitch briefly interrupted their operations. The problems seemed to have been fixed by midday, and airlines reported that flights had resumed. The airlines blamed their difficulties on a breakdown in systems operated by Sabre, a Texas company that provides software and other technology services to airlines and hotels. A Sabre spokeswoman said the systems were running again by early Friday afternoon. She said she did not know the cause of the breakdown. Passengers at several big airports went on social media to complain about flight delays. American said that the outage caused scattered delays but no cancelled flights. Alaska said that 15 flights were delayed by up to 15 minutes. Southwest said the outage briefly prevented bookings, ticket changes and use of mobile boarding passes. United said its flights were not affected.<br/>