Federal regulators cleared American Airlines flights to fly Tuesday morning after a brief suspension due to a system-wide technical issue that affected all U.S. routes.
Just before 7 a.m. ET, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all American Airlines flights to be suspended in the United States at the airline’s request. American had reported a technical issue affecting its entire system, with millions of people traveling for the holidays.
The ground suspension, according to the time stamps on FAA orders, lasted exactly one hour.
American has not provided further details on what technical issue grounded flights, and the airline did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suspensions couldn’t come at a worse time for the millions of travelers expected to fly in the next 10 days.
The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million passengers over the holidays and through Jan. 2.
“Hey @AmericanAir just tell us if we should go home or not. Please don’t make us wait at the airport for hours,” one user wrote.
American operates thousands of flights per day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.
The flight suspension came months after airlines were hit by a global technology outage linked to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
The U.S. FAA was not immediately available for further comment.
Two years ago, Southwest Airlines suffered a systems breakdown during the holidays that caused the cancellation of 16,900 flights and left 2 million passengers stranded. Ultimately, he was fined $140 million in the largest civil penalty in history for a travel disruption.
[Con información de The Associated Press y Reuters]
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