American Airlines’ computer system up at Sky Harbor after short crash

PHOENIX — As thousands of Arizonans were expected to flood Phoenix’s largest airport on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, some travelers saw some hiccups with a major airline’s computer system.

American Airlines’ computer system at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was down for about 45 minutes, prompting employees to tell travelers to print out their boarding passes ahead of time.

Heather Lissner with the city of Phoenix’s aviation department told KTAR News 92.3 FM that the system was slowly coming back online as of 9:40 a.m. and the airline was working to process passengers.

It was not immediately known how many passengers were impacted.

In a statement, an American Airlines spokesperson confirmed the outage and said there was no impact to flight operations.

“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and all operations are returning back to normal.”

But there was some good news: Lissner said there were no other airport issues that officials were seeing and security wait times were less than 15 minutes.

The number of people traveling through Sky Harbor was expected to by 20 percent compared to last year, according to Sky Harbor spokesman Gregory Roybal.

An estimated 66,000 people in Arizona flew to their destination for last year’s holiday, a 4.4 percent jump over 2016.

Sky Harbor spokeswoman Krishna Patel also told KTAR News 92.3 FM travelers flying through the airport — or anyone picking up or dropping off loved ones from the airport — should consider using the Sky Train to avoid congestion on roadways and outside terminals.

Travelers were also encouraged to confirm their flight status with their airline before heading to the airport and arrive at Sky Harbor at least two hours before departure if they are flying domestically and at least three hours before if they are flying internationally.

Security wait times can also be tracked on SkyHarbor.com or on one of the flight information display boards in each terminal.

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