An IT outage briefly halted American Airlines flights across the United States on Monday evening, grounding planes that had not yet departed until airline systems could be restored. The Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory confirming the hold, and the ground stop lasted approximately 45 minutes before flights resumed.
According to ABC News, American Airlines said a technology issue briefly affected connectivity for some of its systems. The airline confirmed in a statement that the issue had been resolved. "Connectivity has been fully restored. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. We appreciate the efforts of our team to bring our systems back online so quickly and take care of our customers," the airline said.
Only flights that were not already airborne at the time of the outage were affected by the ground stop. Flights already in the air continued normally. The FAA advisory, which triggered the nationwide hold, was lifted once connectivity was confirmed restored.
American Airlines did not provide additional details about what specific systems were affected or what caused the outage. The airline did not give an estimate of how many flights or passengers were impacted during the roughly 45-minute window.
