The holiday travel season begins
Millions of Americans take to the roads and skies ahead of the holiday week. AAA says 2024 represents a record travel year nationally. Maddy Borgeri, director of communications and travel expert at RVshare, joined FOX’s LiveNOW to discuss.
A “technical issue” on Christmas Eve morning brought everything to a temporary halt American Airlines flights Nationwide where millions travel for Holiday season.
The US flights were cleared to fly by the Federal Aviation Administration about an hour after a national ground stop order was issued by federal regulators.
Here’s what you should know:
A “technical problem” causes the suspension of all American Airlines flights
Just before 7 a.m. ET, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered all American Airlines flights to ground U.S. flights at the airline’s request.
American Airlines said at the time in a statement to Fox TV stations that its teams were “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
The ground stopped It took exactly one hour, according to time stamps on the FAA orders.
American did not explain what the technical problem was that led to the suspension of flights.
40 million passengers are expected to travel during the holidays
This problem came at a time when millions of passengers were expected to travel during the next ten days. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million holiday travelers through January 2.
Many flights are sold out during the holidays, making cancellations more annoying than during slower periods. Even with only a short outage, cancellations have a ripple effect that can take days to go away.
Travelers can check their flight Status on the American Airlines website.
In December 2022, Southwest Airlines stranded two million passengers, and Delta Air Lines suffered a smaller but significant collapse after a worldwide technology outage in July caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Southwest has been ordered to pay a $35 million fine as part of a $140 million settlement to resolve the federal investigation into the 2022 Christmas disaster.
Excluding the settlement, the country’s fourth-largest airline by revenue said the collapse cost it more than $1.1 billion in refunds and compensation, additional costs and lost ticket sales over several months.
Source: This story was written based on a statement shared with FOX TV stations by American Airlines on December 24, 2024, as well as information published by the Federal Aviation Administration. Reported from Cincinnati, AP contributed.
