Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
American Airlines planes are parked at the gate at Miami International Airport on October 25, 2024. in Miami, Florida.
Joe Riddle | Getty Images
American Airlines briefly halted its U.S. flights Tuesday morning due to a technical issue, halting travel during what carriers expect will be record holiday demand.
By 7:55 a.m. ET, the ground stop had been canceled, an American Airlines spokeswoman told CNBC. The stoppage lasted less than an hour, but more than 900 mainline American Airlines flights were delayed, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. That was more than 38% of American’s Tuesday schedule and more delays than any other US carrier. However, only 11 mainline flights were cancelled.
The airline’s regional carrier subsidiary Envoy also reported another 200 flight delays. In addition to the earlier ground stop, American also encountered thunderstorms in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, home to its largest hub.
The problem was a network hardware issue with a platform that uses technology from DXC, the vendor that supports the flight operating system that allows flights to leave the gate, American said in a statement.
The system is tied to critical data, such as aircraft weight and balance, that are required before a flight can leave the gate.
“This issue has been resolved and flights have resumed,” the airline said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said the American had requested a ground stop.
Airlines regularly request ground stops that delay flights at their point of departure so that destination airports are not overwhelmed with flights that have nowhere to park when there is a disruption. In addition to technical problems, ground stops are established in case of thunderstorms and other bad weather.
The American worked a shorter schedule on Christmas Eve compared to the other days of the Christmas holiday. The carrier did not have any cancellations related to the problem, the spokeswoman said.
Recently, multi-functional airline systems with mission-critical technology platforms have received more attention following periods of mass flight cancellations such as South-westerncollapse during the holiday season in late 2022 and Deltastruggle to recover from CrowdStrike shutdown last summer.
Correction: A ground stop was issued on Tuesday. An earlier version had the time wrong.
