American Airlines grounds all US flights due to unspecified technical issue, disrupting Christmas eve travel plans

American Airlines on Tuesday suspended all U.S. flights due to an unspecified technical issue, according to the company and a regulatory filing, disrupting travel plans for thousands of passengers scheduled to travel on Christmas Eve.

The company did not say why all flights were stopped. Many passengers posted on social media that their flights were stuck on the runway at different airports and have now been returned to the gate.

“No estimated time frame was provided, but they are trying to fix it in the shortest possible time,” the company said in a post on X, in response to a question from a stranded traveler.

Shares of the carrier fell 3.8% before the bell. A notice on the US Federal Aviation Administration website stated that the company had requested a nationwide halt, without giving a reason.

As of 7:30 a.m. ET, American had not issued an official statement on social media, and was only responding to comments on X as posted by several users there, as well as on Bluesky and Facebook.

“Hey @AmericanAir just telling us whether we should fly home or not. Please don’t make us wait at the airport for hours,” one user wrote.

American operates thousands of flights daily to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.

The decision to stop flying comes months after airlines were exposed to a global technical outage linked to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software problem with the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.

It was not immediately possible to obtain further comment from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a systems breakdown over the holidays, canceling 16,900 flights and stranding 2 million passengers. Ultimately, it was fined $140 million, the largest civil penalty ever for travel disruption.