American Airlines on Tuesday lifted an hour-long grounding of all its flights in the US due to an unspecified technical issue, a notice on the US aviation regulator’s website showed.
The grounding, ahead of the busy Christmas travel period, had threatened the holiday plans of thousands.
“A technical issue is affecting American flights this morning. Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologise to our customers for the inconvenience,” the company had said in a statement following the stoppage.
American operates thousands of flights per day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.
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Shares of the carrier clawed back lost ground and were marginally down before the bell.
Earlier, numerous passengers were posting on social media that their flights had been stuck on the runway at various airports and were now being sent back to the gate.
“Hey, @AmericanAir just tell us whether we should go home or not. Please don’t make us wait in the airport for hours,” wrote one user.
The US Federal Aviation Administration in a statement referred to the airline, reiterating that the carrier had reported a technical issue.
The grounding comes months after airlines were hit by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown with its systems during the holidays that led to 16,900 flight cancellations and stranded two million passengers. It was eventually fined $140 million (€134 million) in the largest-ever civil penalty for a travel disruption. – Reuters