NEW YORK — American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday due to a technical issue just as the Christmas travel season kicks into high gear.
American flights were cleared to fly by federal regulators about one hour after a national ground stop order was issued by federal regulators.
Just before 7 a.m. Eastern time, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all American Airlines flights grounded in the U.S. at the airline's request. American had reported a technical issue affecting its entire system with millions traveling for the holiday.
The ground stop, according to the time stamps on the FAA's orders, lasted exactly one hour.
American has not expanded on what technical issue grounded the flights and the airline did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The groundings couldn't come at a worse time for the millions of travelers expected to fly over the next 10 days. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million passengers over the holidays and through Jan. 2.
Many flights during the holidays are sold out, which makes cancellations even more disruptive than during slower periods. Even with just a brief outage, the cancellations have a cascading effect that can take days to clear up.
In December 2022, Southwest Airlines stranded 2 million travelers, and Delta Air Lines suffered a smaller but significant meltdown after a worldwide technology outage in July caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Southwest was ordered to pay a $35 million fine as part of a $140 million settlement to resolve a federal investigation into the Christmas debacle of 2022.
Excluding the settlement, the nation's fourth-biggest airline by revenue said the meltdown cost it more than $1.1 billion in refunds and reimbursements, extra costs and lost ticket sales over several months.
South Florida travelers navigate delays
Many travelers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport weren't aware of the glitch until WPTV reporter Victor Jorges told them about the tech issues.
"I didn't know anything about it," Robyn Lucas, who was heading to Iowa with a stop in Dallas, said. "Our flight's only delayed 20 minutes, so it's not too bad. I'm not nervous."
Travelers were mostly concerned about missing connecting flights due to the hour-long ground stop.
"You don't really have a choice," Gabe Lucas, who was traveling with his family, said. "You just kind of have to deal with it as it goes, so make the best of it. We gotta get home somehow."
WPTV also spoke with Carrah Riner of Boca Raton, who was headed to Tennessee with a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. As of Tuesday morning, she wasn't sure if she'd have enough time to make her connecting flight on her journey home.
"I don't know if I'm gonna make my flight (departing) Charlotte," she said. "I've got like 10 minutes [between both flights]."
She said she wasn't sure what her plan was if she missed that connecting flight, but she was already working on backup plans.
"Honestly, I think I'm tempted to rent a car and just drive home because the next flight's like 4 p.m., and I don't really want to sit in the airport for four hours," she said.
Another traveler, Sonia McCole, who was headed to Oklahoma to visit her son and grandson, came to the airport early. She told us she wasn't expecting things to be "so chaotic" on the morning of Christmas Eve.
"I came three hours early just to make sure, you know, just to make sure," she said. "You just don't know. I mean, it doesn't look as bad over there right now, so we'll see."
