American Airlines flights resume after nationwide 'technical issue' on Christmas Eve

A "technical issue" on Christmas Eve morning temporarily grounded all American Airlines flights nationwide as millions travel for the holiday season. 

American flights were cleared to fly by the Federal Aviation Administration about one hour after a national ground stop order was issued by federal regulators.

Here’s what to know:

‘Technical issue’ grounds all American Airlines flights

FILE - An American Airlines Airbus A321-231 airplane taxis to depart from San Diego International Airport to Dallas at sunset on Nov. 22, 2024, in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

Just before 7 a.m. Eastern time, the FAA ordered all American Airlines flights grounded in the U.S. at the airline’s request. 

At the time, American Airlines said in a statement to FOX Television Stations that its teams were "working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience."

The ground stop lasted exactly one hour, according to the time stamps on the FAA's orders. 

The order, which prevented planes from taking off, was issued at the airline's request after it experienced trouble with its flight operating system, or FOS. The airline blamed technology from one of its vendors.

Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, a union representing American Airlines pilots, said the airline told pilots at 7 a.m. Eastern that there was an outage affecting the FOS system. It handles different types of airline operations, including dispatch, flight planning, passenger boarding, as well as an airplane's weight and balance data, he said.

Some components of FOS have gone down in the past, but a systemwide outage is rare, Tajer said.

At least 51 flights canceled amid ‘technical issue’

As a result, flights were delayed across American’s major hubs, with only 36% of the airline's 3,901 domestic and international flights leaving on time, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. Fifty-one flights were canceled.

On social media, customers expressed frustration with delays that caused them or their family members to miss connecting flights. One person asked if American planned to hold flights for passengers to make connections, while others complained about the lack of assistance they said they received from the airline or gate agents.

Dallas-Fort Worth, New York’s Kennedy Airport and Charlotte, North Carolina, saw the greatest number of delays, Cirium said. Washington, Chicago and Miami experienced considerably fewer delays.

40 million passengers expected to fly over the holidays

The issue came as millions of travelers were expected to fly over the next 10 days. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million passengers over the holidays and through January 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.

Travelers can check their flight status on the American Airlines website.

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.