American Airlines had another “lovely” surprise in stock for its customers as the airline suffered an IT outage on Tuesday, which affected the entire flight network for over an hour and forced a ground stop of all aircraft.
The result was many passengers missing connections and being forced to cancel or delay Christmas plans following the outage as customers lambast the airline on social media.
Traveling during any holiday period is challenging, but American Airlines has the unfortunate talent to make it extra miserable year after year, and passengers have to deal with the fallout.
As reported by the AP, the ground stop only took a bit over an hour, but the domino effect down the line was substantial.
American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday because of a technical problem just as the Christmas travel season kicked into overdrive and winter weather threatened more potential problems for those planning to fly or drive.
Government regulators cleared American flights to get airborne about an hour after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a national ground stop for the airline. 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. …
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.
Meanwhile, the flight-tracking site FlightAware reported that 4,058 flights entering or leaving the U.S., or serving domestic destinations, were delayed, with 76 flights canceled. The site did not post any American Airlines flights on Tuesday morning, but it showed in the afternoon that 961 American flights were delayed. …
Depending on where you are from in the world, DEC 24 is often the main event for Christmas while in some other countries like the U.S. people tend to focus more on Christmas Day (December 25th).
The only consolation here is that this happened in the early morning hours so there was still time for presumingly most affected passengers to catch another flight throughout the day, hopefully getting to spend Christmas with their loved ones.
The timing of this and the explanation given by both the company and the APA spokesperson make me think that this was caused by some kind of a nightly software update that went pear-shaped. Is it a good idea to do updates with the potential for problems right before one of the busiest travel days of the year? Unless it’s something urgent, probably not, but this is all speculation.
What isn’t speculation is the foul mood and animosity people are expressing towards the airline as a result of this, just looking at American Airlines update on X:
I think it’s safe to say that American is no one’s favorite airline at the moment, which is really a shame. In the late 2000s, American was actually ahead of the game and very solid in terms of operations, service, and the AAdvantage program. Since then, it has gone down the drain like no tomorrow.
Passengers might get some compensation after they complain but that doesn’t help the initial situation. Especially during busy holidays when many flights are sold out to begin with so even flights on other carriers are hard to find at times.
Conclusion
American Airlines suffered an IT outage on Tuesday morning which caused an hour-long ground stop of all flights and many missed connections / delays. While the airline is trying to downplay the impact on its network it’s clear based on comments online that people aren’t having it and are once more furious at AA.
Even in this case, it appears the software issue was caused by an IT firm that supplies software solutions for Americans flight ops. Still, the buck stops at AA and having this happen on the day of Christmas Eve isn’t a great look or fortune by any means.
Unfortunately, air passenger rights in such a situation are severely limited for U.S. carriers unless they depart from a jurisdiction that mandates additional protections (such as EU departures). If you were affected, you might be able to complain and get some compensation, but probably not enough to make you fully whole.
Has American Airlines ruined your Christmas?
