Amex Travel say Sabre hasn't updated IATA airport code for Nur-Sultan, NQZ (was TSE)
 

I'm an Amex member and I'm trying to use their Amex Travel service to place a flight booking to Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana), Kazakhstan. The IATA code for Nur-Sultan airport changed from TSE to NQZ on 8th June 2020. When Amex Travel check their system (which they say is Sabre) they still see TSE when looking up Nur-Sultan airport. As a result, when they search for flights (even flights which I've verified exist and have fares available using other websites such as airline websites, ITA Matrix, expedia.com, etc) they see no flights existing.

It's a long shot, but has anyone experienced this problem (either with Nur-Sultan or another airport that changed IATA code at some point in the past)? Or even better, does anyone have access to Sabre to be able to confirm the problem is with Sabre and not some airport database that Amex Travel use on top of the Sabre platform?

Via direct access to the Sabre command line (or Amadeus, not sure about other GDSes), there is no input validation of airport codes. You can plug in pretty much whatever IATA code you want and the system will just return whatever flights match. It's almost certainly a problem with their local airports database not being updated.

allthem Thanks for confirming!

thanks. I needed to know that. No idea why they allow code changes.