Worldwide flight delays caused by glitchy check-in system

Passengers around the world have been enduring long delays thanks to a glitchy passenger reservation system, passengers, airlines and airports are reporting. Airports as far flung as London's Gatwick, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Melbourne and Baltimore Washington have all reported issues. According to Gatwick, it was caused by a problem with Amadeus Altea, a passenger management system used by 125 airlines. That company confirmed that it's having a "network issue," according to the BBC, but has started restoring services.

Such network problems are not at all unusual, but they're usually confined to specific airlines and airports. Today's outage, by contrast, has seemingly affected airports and airlines on at least four different continents.

Passenger @ljrdn3, for instance, reported problems at Berlin Tegal, saying that Lufthansa flights were delayed. Another, @msmith_ky, said that "all of the computers at DCA Southwest Air terminal are down." In response, Southwest indicated that "we should be back up and running very shortly."

So far, airlines affected include at least Air France, Southwest, China Air, Qantas, Korean Air, Lufthansa and British Airways, according to CNN Money. Affected airports other than those mentioned are Incheon, Seoul, Haneda Tokyo, Frankfurt, Zurich, Heathrow, Reagan National.

"Amadeus technical teams took immediate action to identify the cause of the issue and restore services as quickly as possible," a spokesman for Amadeus said. "That action is ongoing with services gradually being restored."