Sabre has moved to put some space between it and a major systems failure at American Airlines that forced the carrier to ground flights yesterday.
While the carrier initially named the GDS across social media channels saying its "reservation and booking tool Sabre is offline", it later apologised to Sabre and customers for the confusion, instead blaming its own "ability to access its res system".
A statement from Sabre says its systems were "operating as normal and have been all day" but that it was ready to help if required.
The GDS and airline have had a shaky relationship in recent months with a long running saga, settled in October, over the airline's moves to provide flight information direct to travel agents.
No clear reason has yet been given for the systems failure although chairman and chief executive Tom Horton issued an apology from AA's operations control centre in Dallas yesterday saying the carrier had experienced a "software issue that impacted both our primary and back-up systems".
Sabre does indeed power the carrier's reservation system but some elements of it are controlled by third parties including HP.
Here's the apology from Horton in full:
AA seems at this stage to have weathered the social media storm well with positive comment and praise for its ongoing communication on both Twitter and Facebook as events unfolded yesterday (Tuesday).
But it is somewhat ironic that the outage and subsequent fall-out occurred a day after the carrier's customer care boss Don Langford hosted a live chat Twitter on how AA is improving the airport experience.
As per much of the sentiment on social media - "things happen you have to roll with the punches".