American Airlines’ statement on flight delays and Twitter apology to Sabre

Here’s American Airlines’ statement on its systemwide outages:

“American’s network system is experiencing intermittent outages. At this time, we are holding all flights on the ground until later this afternoon, when we will provide another update. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as we can, and we apologize to our customers for this inconvenience.

“If your travel plans are flexible, there will be no charge if you would like to change your reservation and we will provide full refunds if your travel plans are not flexible. However, we are unable to make changes to current travel plans until we have resolved this issue.

“We will provide another update as soon as we have more information.”

Asked whether the airline has pinpointed the problem, a spokesperson says: “I have no details to offer.”

On Twitter, American Airlines noted that the problem does not stem from its reservations system provider, Sabre, and the airline apologized to Sabre.

“Clarification: The issue is w/ our ability to access our res system & not w/ @SabreNews. We apologize to Sabre & customers for confusion.”

Earlier, American Airlines had tweeted: “Our reservation & booking tool Sabre is offline. We’re working to resolve as quickly as we can. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

It wasn’t the savviest of moves, pinning the blame on Sabre, if the airline wasn’t sure about it, given the history of litigation between the two companies. Sabre, of course, was spun out of American Airlines.

Sabre tweeted back: “Hope u r able to resolve the issue soon; we stand by ready to help if needed @americanair: Clarification: The issue is w/ our ability to…”