Virgin Australia Flight Delays After Sabre Booking System Crashes Outage ... the message on Virgin Australia's website. Virgin Australia has warned passengers to expect some delays and cancellations to flights on Tuesday night after the booking system used by the airline crashed worldwide. The reservation system operated by Sabre crashed at 2pm but was restored about two hours later. Despite the temporary outage, Virgin advised passengers travelling on Tuesday night to be prepared for delays and to reconsider the need for travel. Flight status for Virgin Australia at Melbourne Airport as at 4pm on Tuesday. It said passengers who did not turn up for flights on Tuesday would not be penalised and would receive full credit for the cost of their flight. The airline also urged travellers to check the status of flights on its website for updates of departure times. The outage of the Sabre system has affected airlines worldwide, believed to include United Airlines, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, American Airlines, Alaskan Airlines and JetBlue. Delayed Virgin Australia passengers at Melbourne Airport. Photo: Hayden Nelson/Ten News The technical glitch has forced airlines including Virgin to check in passengers manually, causing delays at airport counters. Virgin was also unable to take bookings via its website. Most Virgin flights listed on the Sydney and Melbourne airport websites in the next few hours show delays of about 30 minutes, though some flights, particularly in Melbourne, were delayed by more than an hour. The airlines aid it was working to reduce disruption to customers, and apologised for any inconvenience caused by the outage. Etihad also said it was operating a manual check in for all flights on its network, which could cause some delays. But a spokesman for Etihad's Australian business said it was not expecting the outage to have a major impact on its operations. The airline advised passengers to arrive at airports earlier than usual. Sabre's website says its technology connects 350,000 travel agents to more than 400 airlines, 100,000 hotels, 25 car rental brands, 50 rail providers, 13 cruise lines and other global travel suppliers. Virgin moved to the Sabre booking system in January this year. The switch came after an embarrassing meltdown in 2010 that saw the Navitaire booking system offline for 11 days. The outage cost the airline an estimated $15-$20 million in lost earnings. The latest glitch comes just a day after Virgin warned it will record a loss of up to $110 million this year, which it blamed partly on the switch to the new booking system. The airline conceded on Monday that the transfer to the new system meant it had handed as much as $50 million in revenue to rivals such as Qantas and Jetstar. Qantas and its budget offshoot, Jetstar, do not use Sabre.