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Holiday travelers flying on American Airlines had a rough morning when the airline encountered a “vendor technology issue” halted its flights. This caused the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue a nationwide ground stop, but not before more than 600 flights were disrupted. Operations are back to normal, but this was a bad day for a tech issue.
We have resolved a vendor technology issue that briefly affected flights this morning. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and have issued a travel alert to allow for additional flexibility. https://t.co/lAp094H8cx
— americanair (@AmericanAir) December 24, 2024
Flights began having issues and the ground stop began at 7:00 AM EST. This was lifted one hour later, but the holiday plans of thousands were negatively impacted this Christmas Eve. American Airlines issued the following statement:
A vendor technology issue briefly affected flights this morning. That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning. It’s all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible.”
From 30 min ago
“AA: Sabre down systemwide. 90 min ground stop for entire airline. No crew systems, weight and balance, flight planning, etc.”— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) December 24, 2024
The Allied Pilots Association, which represents the 16,000 pilots at American Airlines, said the Flight Operations System (FOS) went down. This system handles all of the airline’s operations and is needed for departing flights. American thankfully got it operational again quickly and did not see the severe issues that Delta Air Lines encountered because of a CrowdStrike issue in October. It’s also reminiscent of Southwest’s holiday 2022 meltdown (but resolved much more quickly).
Captain says @AmericanAir software outage preventing weight & balance calculations “company-wide” with no estimate on resolution. Flights unable to depart as a result. Not a good start to Christmas Eve travel!
— John Morris | Wheelchair Travel (@WCTravelOrg) December 24, 2024
American Airlines is worst than spirit. They have horrible customer service, always losing people bags and stay with delayed flights. I hate them. https://t.co/cLAb2Vwsij
— IHateEverything (@Da_mirror91) December 24, 2024
Passengers took to X to express their aggravation this morning. FlightAware detailed the delays caused by airport. These include:
- Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW): 311 flights
- Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT): 219 flights
- Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD): 63 flights
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX): 57 flights
- Los Angeles International Airport (LAX): 44 flights
- Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA): 36 flights
- New York John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK): 31 flights
Anthony’s Take: The tech outage is over, but a cause has not yet been released. What a bad day for this issue to pop up. American had yet to cancel any flights, but delays have definitely aggravated many travelers today.
(Featured Image Credit: American Airlines.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
