Breaking: American Airlines grounds all flights on christmas eve

American Airlines had briefly grounded all flights with a groundstop issued by the FAA. According to the BBC, the carrier has grounded all services due to a "technical issue".

Many travelers will be flying on Christmas Eve to see friends and loved ones or simply to escape to warmer weather.

Thankfully, the American Airlines grounding wasn't as bad as previously thought, with flights reportedly slowly getting back into the skies.

UPDATE: 2024/12/24 14:50 CET BY TOM BOON

American Airlines Statement

American Airlines issued a statement to Simple Flying on the incident, remarking, A vendor technology issue briefly affected flights this morning. That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning. It’s all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible.

As a result of the grounding from American Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration quickly issued and then canceled a nationwide groundstop for all American Airlines mainline and subsidiary flights. The ground stop was valid for around an hour from 11:49 UTC, as follows,

EVENT TIME: 24/1149 - 24/1300

DESTINATION AIRPORT: ALL

DEP FACILITIES INCLUDED: ALL

PROBABILITY OF EXTENSION: MED

IMPACTING CONDITION: COMPANY REQUEST

COMMENTS: NATIONWIDE GROUNDSTOP FOR AAL MAIN AND SUBS

However, an hour later, at 12:50 UTC, the Federal Aviation Administration issued another notice canceling the groundstop,

DESTINATION AIRPORT: ALL

RELEASED FACILITIES: ALL

REMARKS: NATIONWIDE GROUNDSTOP FOR AAL MAIN AND SUBS CANCELED

Data from Flightradar24 shows hundreds of aircraft with an American Airlines flight number in the sky, most of which will have taken off before the groundstop was issued by the FAA.

The popular flight tracker shows that Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) (a major American Airlines hub) currently has a disruption factor of 5 (the scale goes up to 5 with 3.5-5 described as "Major problems with long delays and several canceled flights").

The average departure delay at Charlotte currently sits at 76 minutes (1 hour 16 minutes). While the lasting impact on passengers will hopefully not be as bad as it could be, this will still cause inconvenience for passengers traveling.

There are also ongoing impacts at other American Airlines hubs, such as Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW).

While the general groundstop has been lifted, the FAA still has a few airport specific ground delays related to the American Airlines incident.

According to the FAA, the current DFW delay is 45 minutes on average, with a maximum of 113 minutes (1 hour 53 minutes).

For many airlines, Christmas Day is the quietest day of the year. European LCC Ryanair won't operate any flights

Meanwhile, those driving past Frankfurt Airport might see lines of Lufthansa planes parked on taxiways.

Thankfully, for American Airlines, it seems as though this incident happened on its quietest day of the holiday.

According to flight schedule data from Cirium, American Airlines has just 3,901 flights scheduled today, compared to 6,415 yesterday. Even Christmas Day will see more operations for the American carrier, with 4,125 flights scheduled.