The Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued a nationwide ground grounding of all American Airlines flights on Christmas Eve morning, with the airline saying a “technical issue” was affecting flights.
The FAA said the ground stop was issued at the airline’s request, on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
American Airlines later clarified that a “vendor technical issue” led to the hour-long ground stop on Tuesday morning. This technological problem affected the systems needed to launch flights.
“This issue has been resolved and flights have resumed,” the airline said. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience caused this morning. It’s all in hand as our team works hard to get customers where they need to be as quickly as possible.
Just before 8 a.m. EST, US Airways said the ground hold had been lifted and flights were beginning to board, which the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed.
American Airlines noted that the airline has 3,900 flights scheduled today, just over half of the more than 6,400 flights scheduled yesterday.
The American had said earlier: “Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
Social media users were late at their doors king Problems with their presence have been reported Boarding passes were scanned.
X users asked American Airlines when the issue will be resolved. American responded: “Our team is currently working on this.” No estimated time frame was given, but they are trying to fix it in the shortest time possible.
