American Airlines Resumes Operations After Grounding of US Flights Due to Technical Issue

New Delhi: American Airlines flights were cleared to fly by federal regulators early Tuesday after a brief grounding due to a systemwide technical issue that impacted all US routes. According to CNN, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had lifted its nationwide ground stop order for all American flights after the airline requested the halt on Christmas Eve and further directed all enquiries to American Airlines for further details.

American Airlines issued an apology for the disruption, acknowledging the inconvenience caused to customers. "We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience," American Airlines said in a statement, as quoted by CNN.  

Just before 7 AM Eastern time, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all American Airlines flights grounded in the US at the airline’s request. American had reported a technical issue affecting its entire system with millions traveling on Christmas Eve.

While the airline did not provide details about the problem, numerous passengers shared on social media that their planes were halted on runways before being redirected to terminals across several airports.

American Airlines operates thousands of flights daily to over 350 destinations across more than 60 countries. This disruption comes on the heels of recent technical problems in the airline industry tied to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and issues with CrowdStrike software.

Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a systems failure during the holiday period, leading to 16,900 cancelled flights and affecting 2 million passengers. This incident resulted in a £140 million fine, the largest civil penalty ever imposed for travel disruption.