9 Jan 2012
Amadeus: Two failures in three months
Amadeus is a transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, providing transaction processing power and technology solutions to both travel provider.
ZDnet report that Amadeus outages affected Qantas and other carriers, forcing them to check in manually. This outages occurred early in 2010 and in November 2009. In January, Qantas flights had been delayed by up to an hour (FlyAfrica.info forum). In fact, Qantas spokesman Simon Rushton said the system was not working properly between 8.25-9.30am. Major airlines such as British Airways, Air France, South African Airways, Thai Airways, Lufthansa and United Airlines were all affected in the global check-in chaos. We also can see on PassengerSelfService an article about the fact that Amadeus check-in system has more major outages.
Here is in Erding the datacenter of Amadeus:
“While you can get really close, you’re never going to get 100 per cent,” said David V. Jones, the departing chief of Amadeus, claiming that the reliability of its systems and processes was “99.999″ per cent. “We have no doubt that in terms of reliability and the quality of our datacentre that we are absolutely world class. That’s just me asserting it but I am pretty confident that our customers would say the same thing,” he added.
He asserted that Qantas is currently “very happy” with Amadeus and said that he was confident with the company’s reputation and performance.
Edit (30 January 2012): We can read on Amadeus Blog at 5:24 p.m:
Amadeus can confirm that some airlines are experiencing difficulties with our systems. We regret any delay and inconvenience caused and are fully investigating this issue. We will provide a further update on this blog at 6 p.m. CET. (Posted by Stuart Brocklehurst (Group Communications Director, Amadeus IT Group) )
At 7:13 p.m:
The systems recovery continues to progress. We regret any inconvenience and delay this may have caused and will continue to update as the situation evolves.
At 8:15 p.m:
Amadeus can now confirm that all airline systems are restored. Some travel agency customers may continue to experience service disruption which we are investigating. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.
At 9:09 a.m:
The systems incident has been fully resolved. All Amadeus systems are now operating normally. Amadeus regrets any inconvenience this incident may have caused.
Amadeus is used by more than 150 airlines (including British Airways, Iberia, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, SAS). ComputerWorldUKreports this new outage and confirm that some customers of multiple airlines were unable to book tickets online during 21 hours.
|
Date |
Service |
Duration |
Critical Data Lost |
| 2010-01-02 | Amadeus Check-in | 1 hour |
No |
|
Date |
Service |
Duration |
Critical Data Lost |
| 2012-01-30 | Amadeus Check-in | 21 hours |
No |