American Airlines grounds flights on Christmas eve, travellers stranded
Updated: Dec 25th, 2024
Travellers with American Airlines found themselves stranded at airports on Tuesday after the airlines temporarily grounded all flights in the US due to a technical issue.
The worst of the disruptions occurred at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, the largest hub for American Airlines and one of the busiest airports in the US.
The travel chaos began early Tuesday morning when a malfunction in the systems necessary to release flights was caused by a technology issue with a vendor, according to American Airlines.
The situation was worsened by severe weather, with a storm system that triggered a flood warning moving into the Dallas area. Despite the technical issue being resolved about an hour later, the storms continued to cause delays for hundreds of flights.
By Tuesday evening, only 15% of American Airlines flights had departed on time at Dallas Fort Worth, as reported by aviation data company Cirium (aviation analytics). Earlier in the day, the airline had requested a ground stop for flights bound for the airport, which lasted for over four hours, until around 8.30 pm.
The thunderstorms led to average departure delays of more than two hours for most of the day, although the wait times began to drop to just over an hour by nightfall, according to FlightAware, an aviation tracker. However, many passengers continued to experience much longer delays.
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