Due to a technical failure, American Airlines canceled all U.S. flights on Christmas Eve, a period one of the busiest in the calendar. Operations resumed an hour later on the heels of a ground stop being cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The grounding affected thousands of passengers throughout the country as airports prepared for the highest volume of holiday travel on record. Announcements at terminals left many travelers frustrated. Airport videograms recorded airline staff stating, “Our system is down, and we can no longer load passengers or cockpit crew. Updates will be provided every 15 minutes.”
What Forced American Airlines to Suspend Flights on Christmas Eve?
Technical malfunction, which the airline has not yet disclosed publicly, led to widespread schedule disruptions and cancellations. X and Facebook were bombarded by the grievances of stranded travelers. In reply, American Airlines expressed an apology and stated, “We are working to fix the problem as soon as possible.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Christmas Eve is a travel day at its absolute maximum and anomalies on that scale disrupt the system as a whole. As a good number of passengers did, some complained about queuing for a long time and with little information about flights.
Shares of the airline in early morning trading dropped 3.8% in response to the incident to reflect investor concerns. Up to now, American Airlines has not released any public statement except for passengers’ complaints relayed through social media (On individual passengers’ complaints through social media.
The Cause Still Unknown
The FAA has confirmed that the ground stop was an airline request and not a result of federal action. Although the operation resumed in a fairly short time, it is still that, that is still unknown, what caused the bug.
This incident is part of a trend of major IT outages in the past twelve months, such as a global Microsoft outage six months ago which impacted airlines, banks, and many other businesses. With the growing adoption of more advanced technical systems by the airlines, technical failures can undermine the quality of the industry.
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