In this article, American Airlines briefly grounded its U.S. flights on Tuesday morning due to a technical problem, causing travel disruptions during a period of anticipated high demand for the holidays. The ground stop was lifted by 7:55 a.m. ET, lasting less than an hour, as confirmed by an American Airlines spokeswoman to CNBC. Over 1,000 mainline flights of American Airlines were delayed, representing more than 40% of the scheduled flights for that day, surpassing delays of any other U.S. carrier. Additionally, more than 90 mainline flights were canceled, accounting for 3% of the total schedule.
The airline’s regional carrier Envoy reported 260 more delayed flights. Apart from the technical issue, American Airlines also faced thunderstorms in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where its primary hub is situated. The problem was identified as a network hardware issue related to a platform managed by DXC Technology, the vendor responsible for maintaining the flight operating system crucial for flights to depart from the gate. This system contains essential data like aircraft weight and balance, necessary before a flight can take off.
American Airlines stated that the issue had been resolved, and flights had resumed, expressing apologies to customers for the inconvenience caused. The Federal Aviation Administration mentioned that American had requested the ground stop, a common practice by airlines to prevent destination airports from becoming overwhelmed during disruptions. Ground stops are typically implemented for various reasons, including technical issues, thunderstorms, and severe weather conditions.
On Christmas Eve, American Airlines operated a reduced schedule compared to other days around the Christmas holiday, with no cancellations attributed to the technical problem, according to a spokeswoman. Recent incidents of widespread flight cancellations, such as Southwest’s challenges during the 2022 year-end holiday season and Delta’s recovery struggles from the CrowdStrike outage in the previous summer, have drawn attention to airlines’ critical technology platforms.
A correction was made to clarify that the ground stop was issued on Tuesday, correcting the earlier version that misstated the timing.
