Numerous airports and carriers throughout the world are experiencing varying delays today, as the Altea software suite produced by the GDS provider Amadeus is reportedly suffering from IT problems. While reservations and inventory management systems are still functional, it appears that the “departure control system” side of things has suffered outages. As such, passengers have been unable to check-in, bags are not able to be tracked, and apparently at Seoul Incheon the software managing boarding was not functioning properly, temporarily halting all flights.
Carriers affected include: Singapore Air, British Airways, Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, Qantas, and Southwest Airlines. The delays seem to have been of varying severity, with Lufthansa and Air France both stating that they only experienced issues for under 15 minutes, while other carriers like Southwest and Korean Air had more wide-ranging problems. IT staff for Amadeus were able to quickly pinpoint the problem, and per Amadeus, the problem is resolved and systems are now fully functional. They simply cite a “network issue” for the problems. The following airports are known to have been affected, with some still reporting delays:
- Seoul Incheon
- Tokyo Haneda
- Singapore Changi
- Melbourne Airport
- Johannesburg OR Tambo Airport
- Paris Charles de Gaulle
- Zurich Airport
- Frankfurt Airport
- London Gatwick
- London Heathrow
- Amsterdam Schiphol
- Baltimore Washington Airport
- Reagan National Airport
Amadeus is of course best-known for its global distribution system (GDS) offerings, which, very simplistically, is a network that carriers use to file fares and manage inventory, and that travel providers access to make reservations. Failures of GDSs have caused various problems and delays recently. Chief among these perhaps are the AApocalypse of April 2013, caused by issues with Sabre, a competitor of Amadeus, as well as various system issues that have plagued Delta in recent memory.
Best of luck to all those traveling today, and make sure to show up early if you can.
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