Sabre Travel Network has joined the ranks of travel technology providers blamed for major system outages in 2012 after its reservation platform collapsed for hours yesterday.
The unfortunate accolade came as American Airlines and Southwest encountered problems with passengers booking flights on Tuesday (11th) because of a failure in their Sabre-run reservation systems.
The precise timing of the outage is unknown, but American Airlines confirmed its reservation system was down during the busy morning period and was fixed around midday (eastern US time).
Southwest reportedly issued a statement on Twitter that problems with its own systems had been resolved, but the carrier appears to have since deleted the tweet.
Other carriers, including Frontier Airlines and Alaska Airlines, also encountered difficulties and were unable to take reservations for a period of time.
Alongside the airline reservation platforms, it has since emerged that some agency subscribers were unable to access the Sabre hotel GDS for a number of hours on Tuesday.
Sabre's issues yesterday came just two weeks after fellow US carrier United faced a similar collapse in its HP-backed SHARES system, an unfortunate situation for the airline on a number of levels, not least after making a high-profile move off of its original Travelport-operated reservation platform in March this year.
In January, Amadeus was blamed for a major failure of its ALTEA system, leaving a string of major airlines without services for hours (this followed a smaller incident just a few months before).
In July, Amazon-hosted systems such as Room 77, Qantas (again) and Virgin Australia collapsed after a storm hit its hosting center in the US.
A Sabre official says:
"Our customers experienced difficulties accessing Sabre, however access has been restored and the system is back on line. We regret any inconvenience this has caused."