NEW YORK: According to American Airlines, its flights resume after a technical glitch forced the carrier to issue an hour-long ground stop, disrupting travel for thousands on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest periods of the year.

The issue that briefly affected the carrier’s ability to get its planes in the air involved network hardware and was caused by DXC Technology, an operating system vendor responsible for maintaining its flight operations, the airline said.

While customers were still pressing for details on their delayed flights, the relatively brief stoppage means American will likely avoid a full-scale meltdown that could ripple for days during the peak holiday travel season.

The airline had 3,901 flights scheduled worldwide on Tuesday, with 19 of those cancelled, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

However, only 37% of the flights have departed on time so far in the day, while 36% have arrived on time, according to Cirium.

“Not a good start to Christmas Eve travel as current flight is grounded and Captain cannot provide ETA on resolution from system outage and/or paperwork error at national level. Will make connections or refunds more complicated too,” a user had said, tagging American Airlines on X.

Tuesday’s snafu is the latest technical snag after carriers were hit by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike earlier this year. The outage had cost Delta Air Lines at least US$500mil.

Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown with its systems during the holidays that led to 16,900 flight cancellations and stranded two million passengers. It was eventually fined US$140mil in the largest-ever civil penalty for a travel disruption. — Reuters