WASHINGTON — American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday due to a technical issue just as the Christmas travel season kicks into high gear.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the company requested a ground stop just before 7 a.m. Eastern for all of its flights. The ground stop was lifted around 8 a.m. Eastern.
“A vendor technology issue briefly affected flights this morning. That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed,” American Airlines said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning. It’s all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible.”
The ground stop, according to the time stamps on the FAA’s orders, lasted exactly one hour.
The groundings couldn’t come at a worse time for the millions of travelers expected to fly over the next 10 days.
The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million passengers over the holidays and through January 2.
In December 2022, Southwest Airlines stranded 2 million travelers, and Delta Air Lines suffered a smaller but significant meltdown after a worldwide technology outage in July caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Many flights during the holidays are sold out, which makes cancellations even more disruptive than during slower periods. Even with just a brief outage, the cancellations have a cascading effect that can take days to clear up.
This will also be the first holiday season since a Transportation Department rule took effect that requires airlines to give customers an automatic cash refund for a canceled or significantly delayed flight. Most air travelers were already eligible for refunds, but they often had to request them.