American Airlines Grounded: Significant Technical Issues Cause Nationwide Flights to Freeze
American Airlines passengers had a terrible Friday, June 27th, when flight operations came to a screeching halt due to a widespread tech breakdown. Some of the busiest airports in the country were affected by the disruption, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami International, Charlotte Douglas, and Chicago O’Hare.
The malfunction caused extensive delays, and for a while, the airline’s key systems for reservations, check-ins, ticketing, and baggage management just stopped functioning, according to CNN and The New York Times.
American Airlines acknowledged in a statement to PEOPLE that “connectivity” problems were the cause of the issue.
“Some of our systems’ connectivity was affected by a technical issue yesterday,” the airline said. “We collaborated with our partners to fix the problem, and our teams’ and customers’ applications are now completely functional and back up. We did not cancel any flights, however we did have delays as a result. We are sorry for the experience our consumers had.
Greg Chin, the director of communications at Miami International Airport, stated that the problem was brought to the airport’s attention just after 2:00 p.m. local time. “We recently received notification of it. We’re still awaiting word on if any websites have been affected,” Chin told CNN.
American Airlines sent advisories stating that they were experiencing system failures for at least two hours, according to a source from one of the affected airports. Almost every step of the flight procedure, from booking to boarding, was apparently impacted by the malfunction.
An irate traveler who was departing from Arizona claimed to have been stranded on a plane for more than an hour. “The pilot informed CNN that AA’s electronic maintenance system is down and they are unable to enter the work completed on the aircraft and approve it, so we are stuck until that system is restored.”
Systems were allegedly returning to service around 2:45 p.m. ET. The delays, however, had not ended yet. The insider went on to say, “Slight delays as they work towards normal operations.”
Just before 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, an American Airlines representative subsequently stated that the issue had been fixed and that “everything was back to normal,” as reported by The New York Times.
Nevertheless, the airline’s timetable was permanently altered by the interruption. More than 40% of AA’s flights had delays, and 7% experienced cancellations, according to data from flight monitoring firm FlightAware.
A comment regarding the incident has not yet been issued by the Federal Aviation Administration. Both passengers and the airline are hopeful that “back to normal” implies that there won’t be any more unannounced shutdowns for the time being.
