The Grinch may have just pulled off his boldest plan yet — stopping holiday travelers. American Airlines announced early on Christmas Eve that it had to temporarily ground all U.S. flights.
As you can imagine, that went over about as well as a Halloween costume at a holiday party. The announcement threw people's travel plans into uncertainty as well as chaos. The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year. Many last-minute travelers are trying to make it home for Christmas, so any last minute delays could prove devastating.
So what gives? Is American Airlines just being Grinches? Well, no. It's all due to undisclosed technical issues. At 6:30 a.m., the airline announced that it was "experiencing a technical issue with all American flights." They later claimed that it was a "vendor technology issue" that caused the issue.
"Our team is currently working to rectify this. Your continued patience is appreciated," the airline told fliers. "An estimated timeframe has not been provided, but they're trying to fix it in the shortest time possible."
American Airlines Lifts Ground Order
Fortunately, there is some good news to be had.
The delay didn't last that long. Shortly before 8 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop order. Just how much, the delay will affect flights for the rest of the day remains to be seen. Hopefully, it won't be too big of an issue. Likewise, let's have our fingers crossed that American Airlines doesn't experience any other issues.
"That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning," American Airlines said. "It's all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible."
But viral videos showed a bit of the situation from the ground level. In Fort Lauderdale, an agent had to stop passengers at the gate and explained to confused travelers that their system was down.
This was a wide scale issue affecting hundreds of planes. While I don't have an exact total, FlightAware's misery map estimates that more than 700 flights got delayed. Some of America's biggest airports including Charlotte Douglas and Washington National got hit the hardest. With more than 40 million people flying during the holidays, every delay proves to be costly.
