American Airlines resumes Christmas Eve flights after technical issue

American Airlines has resumed service after suspending operations for nearly an hour on Tuesday due to a technical problem that affected the systems needed to clear its planes.

The international shutdown was lifted shortly before 13:00 GMT, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The chaos came on one of the busiest days of the year when passengers were making Christmas trips.

In a statement, the airline said a “vendor technical problem” had caused the problem and “everything was on the roof” to minimize further disruption.

“We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience caused this morning,” the airline said.

“It’s all hands on deck as our team works hard to get customers where they need to go as soon as possible.”

Departure boards at major US airports are still showing delays of up to two hours for some flights as the airline recovers from the nationwide outage, but the website Flightradar24 shows flights are returning to several US destinations and on many routes. it is leaving on time.

Passengers reported on social media that they were on the tarmac or at the gates where flights were affected by the one-hour outage.

Other passengers were also told to get off their planes.

In a video posted on X by a CBS reporter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a flight attendant announced that a flight to Philadelphia was about to take off.

“The system is slowly returning,” an agent announced from the gate.

In July, American Airlines, among other major operators, flights in the US due to communication problems caused by global IT breakdowns.

That failure – which also affected banks and emergency services – was caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.