Power outage at airline reservation system affects air travel

Outage at Navitaire's facility in Minneapolis impacts numerous airlines, flights in North America

MINNEAPOLIS – Authorities say a power outage at Navitaire's facility in Minneapolis impacted numerous airlines and flights in North America.

Navitaire is a reservation technology company that counts for more than 60 airlines as customers.

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While it is unclear how many airlines were affected or how many flights were canceled, officials said the major airlines affected in North America appear to be AirTran, Spirit, and Toronto-based Porter Airlines.

"We are currently experiencing technical issues with our reservations system as a result of a power outage with our provider that is impacting multiple airlines," Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Misty Pinson told CNN. "All flights are operating and we have not had any cancellations as a result of this issue."

"A power outage earlier today at our vendor's data facility that manages our airport computer systems is causing us to process customers manually at the airport for AirTran's operations," said Chris Mainz, spokesman for AirTran parent company Southwest Airlines. "The power at the facility has been restored, and we are told that the AirTran system should be fully restored in the next 90 minutes, or 9:30 pm CDT. We sincerely apologize to all of our Customers impacted by this outage. Of course, we'll do our best to minimize delays and accommodate impacted Customers as quickly as possible."

"We are experiencing system wide network outages affecting our website, Call Centre, reservation system and flight planning. Thank you for your patience while we work to provide updates," read a statement on Porter Airlines' website. "The following flight numbers have been cancelled (it lists 40 flight cancellations for this evening and two for tomorrow). If your flight number is on this list, please do not go to your departure airport. Our Call Centre team is expecting your call at 1-888-619-8622. We are expecting a high volume of calls and thank you for your patience."

CNN said multiple attempts to reach Navitaire have been unsuccessful, and their website is down.