American Airlines was forced to halt all of its flights after a systemwide IT issue was discovered.
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According to Fox Business, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an updated advisory on July 28, forcing American Airlines to ground its flights due to the IT outage that disrupted operations across the carrier’s network.
The FAA advisory noted that the nationwide ground stop began at approximately 6:29 p.m. ET, affecting American Airlines and all its regional affiliates. Nearly 1,500 people reported having issues with their American Airlines mobile app on Downdetector by 6:40 p.m. ET.
Following the news, American Airlines issued a statement, stating that its IT team is working to restore the impacted systems as quickly as possible.
“We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue,” the airline stated. “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
American Airlines also noted, “Our team’s working hard to get everybody back on track asap, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
The IT Issue Was Quickly Resolved
The advisory was revised, limiting restrictions to Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina.
American Airlines later announced that the system “connectivity has been fully restored” and flights were “departing again.”
“A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening,” the announcement read. “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.”
However, an updated FAA notice states that Charlotte Douglas International Airport is still under restrictions as the major airline works through a “significant backlog of flights.”
Details about the IT issue, including its cause, have not been revealed. American Airlines appeared to be the only carrier impacted by the issue.
In addition to the IT incident, other incidents have led to more than 2,500 flights being canceled at airports across the US, per FlightAware.
CNN reports that recently, thunderstorms had forced ground stops at airports across major cities, including New York, Newark, Washington, DC, and Baltimore.