American Airlines on Tuesday lifted a one-hour ground stop on all its flights in the United States due to an unspecified technical issue, according to a notice on the U.S. aviation regulator's website.
American Airlines flights arriving and departing from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky international airport There were short delays on Tuesday morning, but it is unclear whether these are due to this technical issue or something else.
The ground stop ahead of busy Christmas travel had threatened the holiday plans of thousands of people.
“A technical issue is affecting flights to America this morning. “Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for this inconvenience.”
American operates thousands of flights a day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.
The carrier's shares managed to pull back, falling marginally before the bell.
In a statement, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration referred Reuters to the airline, reiterating that the carrier had reported a technical problem.
American was responding to comments about X from a large number of users, as well as Bluesky and Facebook.
“Hey, @AmericanAir tell us if we should go home. Please don't make us wait at the airport for hours,” wrote one user.
The grounding comes months after airlines were hit by a global technology outage tied to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Two years ago, Southwest Airlines suffered a meltdown in its systems during the holiday that caused 16,900 flight cancellations and stranded 2 million passengers. He was eventually fined $140 million, the largest fine ever for travel disruption.
