Here’s why American Airlines, JetBlue and other flights were delayed at the Miami airport
Travelers at Miami International Airport and other airports across the country experienced delays early Friday after a technical issue made it difficult for people to book tickets and check in for flights from several carriers.
American Airlines told the Miami Herald early Friday that the issue was with Sabre, a service that some carriers use for bookings. Sabre said the system “outage,” which affected multiple carriers, has been resolved. The company said the glitch was caused by a Dell EMC “hardware redundancy failure” and that Dell EMC is working to learn why it occurred.
The glitch affected flights from American Airlines, JetBlue, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines, said MIA spokesman Greg Chin. He said 13 arrivals and 16 departures were delayed because of the issue. Long lines were seen at MIA early Friday, with people waiting to check in or rebook flights.
West Palm Beach resident Jenna Waterous, 22, and her mom were among the people affected by the delays. The pair had been at the airport for a few hours, waiting for their 5:30 a.m. American Airlines flight to Dallas when they learned about the delay.
They had a connecting flight to catch in Dallas, this one to Honolulu, to celebrate Waterous’ graduation from the University of Florida. Their flight was delayed only an hour. In Dallas, they missed their flight to Honolulu by 10 minutes.
“And we RAN,” Waterous told the Miami Herald in a direct message on Twitter.
Thankfully, they were able to book tickets for another flight to Hawaii later in the day. Now, she’s looking at the bright side.
“Hey, I’ll be sitting on a beach drinking from a coconut soon!” she said.
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport said it was not experiencing any issues, and that any prior technical issues were “short lived and resolved.”
The outage also caused delays at other airports across the country, with people posting complaints and videos on social media of crowded, long lines, including at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 9:02 AM.
