American, Delta, United Websites Return to Normal after Google Software Outage Affects Flight Searches and Bookings

The websites of multiple major U.S. airlines were effectively down for several hours Monday after the Google-owned company that provides price and flight information suffered an outage.

Websites for three carriers, namely American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines were unable to allow customers to display potential flights and book a trip for multiple hours, instead displaying error meesages.

The message “We didn’t find a match. Please choose different search options” was given instead of providing the correct information, such as flight times and prices.

Frustrated travelers bombarded airlines on social media with complaints about the issue.

“Something is wrong with your website,” Grant B., a Twitter user, told American Airlines around 2 p.m. EDT on Monday while trying to book a flight from Los Angeles to St. Louis, to which the airline replied, “We’re sorry. We’re working to resolve the issues.”

The problem was caused by an issue with Alphabet’s ITA Software by Google, which offers airlines airfare search and pricing information.  American, Delta, and United are all customers of ITA.

“Earlier today, a data error impacted our flight shopping software, which prevented airline partners, as well as Google Flights, from showing fare information,” Google said in a statement. “We’ve implemented a fix and the issue has now been mitigated. We’ll continue to monitor to ensure this is fully resolved.”

The issue did not affect the ability of passengers to check into flights nor did it impact airport operations in any manner.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)