American Airlines Inc. briefly grounded all departures nationwide Tuesday evening after a tech outage crippled its IT infrastructure during the peak evening rush, according to the airline and federal aviation authorities.
At the carrier’s request, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a nationwide ground stop at approximately 6:29 p.m. ET. The Air Traffic Control System Command Center confirmed that the outage affected facilities across American’s entire network. While flights already airborne continued safely to their destinations, departing aircraft were held at gates nationwide.
The ground stop was lifted about 50 minutes later at 7:18 p.m. ET after technicians restored connectivity.
“A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening,” an American Airlines spokesperson said. “Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
The timing of the glitch compounded an already chaotic evening for air travel. Severe East Coast thunderstorms had already triggered regional ground stops in New York, Newark, Washington, and Baltimore. The added IT failure triggered widespread delays and left crowds of stranded passengers waiting at major hubs, including Chicago O’Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Philadelphia International. Passengers also reported being unable to access American’s website and mobile application during the disruption.
“We were told maybe it was a computer problem,” said passenger Lynn Breitinger, who learned about the ground stop near the end of her flight to DFW.
According to flight-tracking service FlightAware, American Airlines logged 1,387 delays — representing 38% of its mainline schedule — and 341 cancellations on Tuesday. While severe weather accounted for a significant portion of those disruptions, the 49-minute freeze hit during American’s busiest summer schedule on record, when the carrier operates nearly 7,000 daily flights.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier, which serves more than 200 million passengers annually, did not specify which internal system failed or what caused the outage. However, officials indicated there was no sign of a cybersecurity breach.
Tuesday’s disruption reflects a broader pattern of software vulnerabilities across the aviation sector. Last week, a 75-minute outage in United Airlines Inc.’s reservation system crippled check-in processing across its hubs. Similarly, a third-party hardware failure grounded American’s fleet on Christmas Eve in 2024. The industry’s most severe modern disruption occurred in July 2024, when a flawed CrowdStrike Inc. software update crippled global air travel and led to more than 7,000 flight cancellations for Delta Air Lines Inc. alone.
Operations at American Airlines have since resumed, though domino-effect delays were expected to persist through late Tuesday night.
