American Airlines flights across the United States resumed Tuesday morning (ET) after a brief nationwide ground stop caused by a “vendor technology issue.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that American Airlines requested the ground stop, impacting thousands of travelers on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
According to a report from CNN, the airline’s Flight Operations System, known as FOS, experienced an outage, preventing the release of flights. This system handles critical operations, including passenger boarding and weight and balance calculations.
While American Airlines has backup flight planning tools, the outage led to significant delays, though minimal cancellations. The FAA lifted the ground stop after approximately an hour, allowing flights to begin taking off again.
“A vendor technology issue briefly affected flights this morning,” American Airlines stated. “That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed.”
The airline apologized for the inconvenience and said it was working diligently to get passengers to their destinations.
The Allied Pilots Association, representing 16,000 American Airlines pilots, confirmed the FOS outage and noted that pilots are trained to handle such events, based on a CNN report.
Despite the quick resolution, residual delays persisted throughout the day. Flight tracking data from Cirium, as obtained by CNN, showed that only 37% of American Airlines flights departed on time Tuesday, with 36% arriving on schedule.
However, 93% of flights departed within two hours of their scheduled time. As of Tuesday evening, only 26 flights were canceled across all airlines nationwide, according to FlightAware.
The incident occurred during the peak holiday travel season, with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) projecting nearly 40 million travelers between December 19 and January 2. American Airlines anticipated December 27 and December 20 to be its busiest travel days.
This outage adds to a history of technical issues affecting airlines, including a significant disruption in July caused by a cybersecurity firm’s faulty software update. In December 2022, a severe winter storm coupled with outdated scheduling systems caused major cancellations for Southwest Airlines.
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