Why American Airlines grounded all US flights for an hour on busy Christmas Eve

American Airlines lifted an hour-long ground stop of all its domestic flights due to a vendor technology issue, a notice on the US aviation regulator's website showed.

Multiple travellers have reported on social media that their aircraft were stationary on runways at various airports before being directed back to terminals, Reuters reported.

The company responded to a stranded passenger on X stating, "An estimated timeframe has not been provided, but they're trying to fix it in the shortest possible time."



The carrier's shares declined 3.8% in pre-market trading. The US Federal Aviation Administration's website indicated only that the company had requested a nationwide ground stop, without additional details.

As of 7:30 am ET, the airline had not issued an official statement on social platforms, only responding to individual comments on X, Bluesky and Facebook.

One passenger wrote, "Hey, @AmericanAir just tell us whether we should go home or not. Please don't make us wait in the airport for hours."

American Airlines conducts thousands of daily flights to over 350 destinations across more than 60 countries.
This disruption follows recent airline industry technical issues linked to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and CrowdStrike software complications.

Two years previously, Southwest Airlines experienced a systems failure during the holiday period, resulting in 16,900 cancelled flights and affecting 2 million passengers. The incident led to a £140 million fine, the largest civil penalty ever imposed for travel disruption.