American Airlines says it will add flights today to help accommodate the thousands of passengers stranded by yesterday’s computer outage.
Industry insiders say the carrier likely will face delays all day as it juggles planes to get everything back in line, but American says only a few flights will be delayed or canceled.
American, the third-largest carrier in the US, canceled 670 flights yesterday and delayed more than 1,000 more after it lost connections with its internal computer systems.
On its website, the carrier’s CEO Tom Horton apologized, saying that though the carrier has redundant computer systems, "a software issue impacted both the primary and back-up systems."
Sabre Holdings Corp., the booking system shared by travel agencies and travel providers, said its system, which actually was developed when it was a subsidiary of American Airlines, played no part in the problem. American apologized after originally blaming Sabre.
American currently is planning to exit from bankruptcy and create the world’s largest airline by merging with USAirways Group.
American yesterday said it would allow passengers to change reservations at no charge and provide full refunds to those who could not change
