Technical glitch delays airlines worldwide

Amadeus have now released a statement regarding yesterday's technical upset which affected airlines internationally.

"Amadeus can confirm that the issues related to printing of boarding passes from our departure control system experienced this morning have now been fully resolved. We are currently investigating the cause of the issue that occurred today and regret any inconvenience caused to our customers."

They say they remain committed to providing the industry's leading information technology services that support many airlines around the world.

Flights across the world were delayed this morning (6.40am AEDT) by a technical glitch.

Qantas staff had to hand-write boarding passes after their check-in systems malfunctioned nationwide. Other airlines, including British Airways, were also affected by the outage.

In Melbourne, just two staff had to handwrite boarding passes for hundreds of passengers, according to Sydney Morning Herald reports.

“We did have an issue with the printing of our boarding passes this morning,” a Qantas spokesperson told NBR. “It was a network-wide issue.” She said it was resolved around noon.

“Our supplier, Amadeus, all their airline clients weren’t able to print their boarding passes, so it wasn’t just Qantas. Brititsh Airways was also impacted by this system issue.”

Amadeus is a global company providing processing systems for the travel and tourism industry. The Qantas spokesperson said while other airlines using Amadeus' technology were affected, she was not certain exactly which ones.

She said hand-writing boarding passes was part of the airline’s “standard recovery back-up plans” when these type of issues “pop[ped] up”.

Last January, an hour-long Amadeus outage affected thousands of Qantas passengers across Australia. While the outage itself was resolved at 9.30am, it delayed flights into the mid-afternoon.

An Amadeus spokesperson confirmed the worldwide outage but would not comment further at present, or confirm exactly what airlines were affected.

“We’re just looking into what actually happened. I cannot tell you anything until we find out what actually happened.”