American Airlines planes sit by their gates at the Miami International Airport on October 25, 2024 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
American Airlines grounded its U.S. flights Tuesday morning due to a technical problem, snarling travel during what carriers expect to be a period of record demand for the holidays.
By 7:55 a.m. ET, the ground stop had been lifted, an American Airlines spokeswoman told CNBC. The ground stop lasted for less than an hour.
American said the issue stemmed from a platform provided by a vendor. The system is tied to critical data like an aircraft’s weight and balance, which is required before a flight can leave the gate.
“That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed,” the carrier said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said American had requested the ground stop
Airlines routinely request ground stops, which hold flights at origin, so that destination airports aren’t overwhelmed by flights with nowhere to park when there are disruptions. In addition to technical problems, ground stops are put in place for thunderstorms and other severe weather.
American was operating a smaller schedule on Christmas Eve compared with other days around the Christmas holiday. The carrier didn’t have any cancellations tied to the issue, a spokeswoman said.
Airlines’ patchwork systems of critical technology platforms have gained more attention lately after periods of mass flight cancellations such as Southwest‘s meltdown during the 2022 year-end holiday season and Delta‘s struggle to recover from the CrowdStrike outage this past summer.
Correction: The ground stop was issued Tuesday. An earlier version misstated the timing.
