American Airlines said on Tuesday its flights had resumed after a technical glitch forced the carrier to issue an hour-long ground stop, disrupting travel for thousands on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest periods of the year.
A vendor technology issue briefly affected its ability to get planes in the air, the carrier said, without identifying the provider.
While customers were still pressing for details on their delayed flights, the relatively brief stoppage means American is likely to avoid a full-scale meltdown that could ripple for days during the peak holiday travel season.
“Not a good start to Christmas Eve travel as current flight is grounded and Captain cannot provide ETA on resolution from system outage and/or paperwork error at national level. Will make connections or refunds more complicated too,” a user said, tagging American Airlines on X.
It is the latest technical snag after carriers were hit by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike earlier this year.
The outage had cost Delta Air Lines at least US$500 million.
Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown with its systems during the holidays that led to 16,900 flight cancellations and stranded 2 million passengers. It was eventually fined US$140 million in the largest-ever civil penalty for a travel disruption.