American Airlines planes sit near their gates at Miami International Airport on October 25, 2024 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raddle | getty images
American Airlines A technical issue briefly halted its US flights on Tuesday morning, leading to what the carrier expects to be a period of record demand over the holidays.
An American Airlines spokesperson told CNBC that the ground stop had been lifted by 7:55 a.m. ET. The ground stop lasted less than an hour, but delayed more than 900 American Airlines mainline flights, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. That was more than 38% of American’s schedule for Tuesday, and more delays than any other US carrier. However, only 11 mainline flights were cancelled.
The airline’s sister regional carrier Envoy also reported another 200 delayed flights. In addition to the first ground stop, American was also facing storms in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where its largest hub is located.
American said in a statement the problem was a network hardware issue involving a platform that uses DXC Technology, a vendor that maintains the flight operating systems that allow flights to leave the gate.
This system is linked to vital data such as the weight and balance of the aircraft, which is required before the flight leaves the gate.
“That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed,” the carrier said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience caused this morning.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said American had requested the ground stop.
Airlines routinely request ground stops, which stop flights at the point of origin, so that destination airports are not overwhelmed with flights and have no place to park if a disruption occurs. In addition to technical problems, ground stops are instituted for storms and other severe weather.
American was operating a reduced schedule on Christmas Eve compared to other days around the Christmas holidays. The carrier has not made any cancellations related to the issue, a spokesperson said.
Airlines’ patchwork systems of critical technology platforms have attracted greater attention recently following a period of mass flight cancellations. south westrecession during the 2022 year-end holiday season and deltastruggle to overcome CrowdStrike Outage last summer.
Correction: The ground stop was issued on Tuesday. The time was wrong in the earlier version.
