American Airlines Grounds All Flights After Nationwide ‘Technical Issue’ On Christmas Eve

American Airlines passengers had a rough start to their Christmas Eve travel plans when the airline grounded all flights on Tuesday morning due to a nationwide “technical issue.”

American requested a ground stop for all of its flights, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, and wrote on social media early Tuesday morning, “We’re currently experiencing a technical issue with all American Airlines flights.” An hour after the disruption, American Airlines began boarding flights again and the FAA lifted the ground stop, ABC News reported.

American said in in a statement later Tuesday morning that a “vendor technology issue” caused the disruption which has “been resolved and flights have resumed,” CNN reported.

Just after 7:00 a.m. ET, American Airlines had nearly 2,000 outages reported, according to DownDetector. Social media users said they were stuck on the tarmac or being sent back to the gate after boarding their flights, Fox Business reported.

“Was seated on plane. Captain made announcement at first computer was down for balancing the weight. Maybe 5 -10 minutes delay he stated. About 15 mins later made announcement entire AA system was down,” Texas native Morgan McMahon told Fox News.

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The flight disruption for one of the biggest airlines in the U.S. came during the year’s busiest travel season. The Transportation Security Administration said that up to 40 million people are expected to fly through January 2, according to the Associated Press. American alone has over 3,000 domestic flights scheduled on Tuesday. The airline appears to have recovered well from the ground stop as only 26 American flights were canceled nationwide as of Tuesday morning.

In 2022, Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines stranded millions of travelers after a technology issue that affected flights worldwide.