Amtrak Booking Outage Ends Amid FAA Ground Stop

Amtrak’s booking system suffered an outage Friday afternoon, leaving customers unable to purchase or modify tickets through the website and mobile app. The disruption began around 5 p.m., with hundreds of users reporting problems, and another surge occurred near 6 p.m. Amtrak linked the booking issues to a system-wide update. The company also reported elevated travel demand across its network. Reservation systems began recovering around 9 p.m., though some customers faced continued difficulties with transactions and modifications. Support call centers experienced unusually high call volumes.

The incident occurred during a nationwide FAA ground stop—the first since January 2023 and the second since September 11, 2001. The FAA attributed its ground stop to a temporary telecommunications outage, which has since been resolved.