All flights of the world’s largest airline were grounded on one of the busiest holidays of the year.
American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, Texas, said early on Christmas Eve, US time, that no flights would take off due to a “technical issue” that hit first thing on Tuesday morning.
The US’ Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stated there had been a “nationwide ground stop for American Airlines”.
The carrier is also the US’ largest domestic airline and has multiple large hubs including Dallas, Miami, Charlotte, Phoenix and Chicago which it routes most of its flights through.
“Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologise to our customers for the inconvenience,” the airline said in a statement.
On social media, several users said staff had told them IT systems that allow the scanning of boarding passes had failed.
Just before 8am New York time (12 midnight AEDT), American Airlines said the ground stop had been lifted and passengers were beginning to board aircraft.
However the knock on effect of the shutdown for several hours could ricochet throughout the day as people rush home for Christmas.
Masses of flights leave between 5am and 8am, when the ground stop was in place, and those planes now won’t be at their intended destinations causing further delays.
That could be exacerbated by snow storms in America’s north east and heavy rain and winds in the west.
Airline departure boards across the US were showing delays of around two hours for American Airlines flights.
“A vendor technology issue briefly affected flights this morning,” American Airlines said in a statement.
“That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed.
“We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this morning.”
