American Airlines Flight Disruptions

By Utkarsh Shetti, Abhijith Ganapavaram and David Shepardson
(Reuters) – American Airlines announced on Tuesday that its flights had resumed after a technical glitch necessitated a one-hour ground stop, impacting thousands of travelers on Christmas Eve, a peak travel period.

The airline attributed the disruption to a vendor technology issue that briefly hindered its capacity to launch planes. Customers on social media sought more information regarding their delayed flights, though the brief duration of the stoppage may help American avoid extensive fallout this holiday season.

One passenger shared their frustration on X, stating, "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," while tagging American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL).

American Airlines' shares fell by 2% in early trading. This incident follows similar technical issues experienced by other airlines earlier this year, including a global tech outage linked to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s Azure cloud platform, which cost Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) at least $500 million.

In December two years ago, Southwest Airlines faced a system collapse during the holidays resulting in 16,900 flight cancellations and leaving 2 million passengers stranded. The airline later incurred a $140 million fine, the largest civil penalty for travel disruption to date.

Despite upgrades to cybersecurity and operational software, industry expert Ken Quinn noted that the exodus of skilled workers during the pandemic makes such glitches somewhat foreseeable.

American Airlines operates thousands of flights daily, serving over 350 destinations in more than 60 countries. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration referred comments to the carrier, confirming the technical issue.

This year, American Airlines and its regional carriers have canceled over 23,000 flights, approximately 1.3% of their scheduled services, according to FlightAware data. The disruption occurs as the Transportation Security Administration anticipates screening a record 40 million passengers during the holiday period.