American Airlines has halted departures across the country after a systemwide IT outage took down its systems. I’m sitting on an American Airlines flight as I write this. Our captain told us that no American flight could take off, that the airline was trying to “reboot the system in Dallas,” and that this should take “10 minutes” but we’re taking an initial 30-minute delay on an already-delayed flight.
- In fact, the systems are coming back up!
- But it’s caused flights to miss their takeoff opportunity in-between severe weather events in the Northeast
At 6:29 p.m. Eastern, the FAA issued an advisory imposing a ground stop beginning at 6:30 p.m. for American and its subsidiaries. The order covers every U.S. departure facility, every destination and all aircraft. The FAA gives the reason simply as an “IT outage.”
- The initial ground-stop window runs through 7:30 p.m. Eastern, with an update expected then.
- That’s a planning window, not an estimate that the outage will necessarily last an hour.
- It could be lifted early or extended.
Flights already in the air continue flying. Passenger reports began appearing about 20 minutes before the formal FAA ground stop. Reports have come from DFW, Charlotte, Chicago O’Hare, Orlando, New Orleans, LaGuardia, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle and numerous smaller stations.
- Boarding passes won’t load in the app
- Airport agents unable to check in, board or rebook passengers
- Checked baggage and gate systems unavailable
- Aircraft unable to obtain flight plans or push back
- Maintenance unable to submit an electronic aircraft signoff
My first thought was American’s passenger service platform which handles reservations, check-in, boarding and baggage. But I’m not sure that would explain maintenance signoffs and flight plans. And there’s no reported issue with other airlines on Sabre systems reporting similar issues.
In December 2024, an outage involving network hardware took down the systems needed to release flights. American stopped departures nationwide for about an hour. That incident involved flight planning, dispatch and weight-and-balance.
Last June an outage disrupted booking, check-in, ticketing, baggage tagging and maintenance.
Thunderstorms were already producing major ground stops and delays today. My own earlier flight was cancelled. And this delay pushed us into another weather event and ground stop – we missed our window and we’re being deplaned.
Getting off the plane my thought was that hopefully the American Airlines IT team in Hyderabad can successfully turn everything off and then on and the weather event won’t last long. But then American’s systems starting to come back on so we wait and hope for a new takeoff time once systems fully recover.
The system outage caused weather delays to turn into controllable delays – passengers who would have made their connections missing them because they couldn’t take off when weather was good. However, since the outage was less than 90 minutes a passenger delayed three hours or more because of that additional delay will still likely be told no to a meal voucher.
The real question is 2026 should be: Is this an internal American issue or was it a cyber attack by a nation state or someone else?
I’m deep, deep into the cybersecurity world and 99% of the public has no idea what’s actually going on these days. It would make Joe Public literally afraid to leave the house each day if they all knew.
That’s bad-news-bears. If we had an UK/EU261 equivalent, those affected passengers would receive compensation and overnight accommodations, because tech outages are not ‘extraordinary circumstances.’ And, the tech issue supersedes weather, here.
Instead, as Gene Wilder said as Willy Wonka, they ‘get nothing!’ Maybe, someday, we can elect representatives who don’t take legal bribes from the airline lobby and actually protect consumers by passing similar air passenger rights legislation. Someday. Safe travels, everyone.
ORD is indeed my second home today! Hoping to get out today. Saw LGA and PHL flights from here were pretty much cancelled, DCA ones largely delayed. Luckily I got nothing going on today so just hanging out. Safe travels everyone!
@L737 — Oh no! I feel for you. How’s the lounge situation? @O’Hare Is My Second Home, where are you when we need you! Is Amtrak an option? Choo-choo…
watching dfw on fr24, there’s 30 mainline ships piled up at the south end of the field
a real tell is #79 from lhr, it’s now on 45 minutes stranded in sight of it’s gate
envoy and skywest departures anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes behind have been rolling south
mainline metal is basically frozen in place, although i’ve seen a couple of takeoffs with post reboot departure times
transponders are starting to turn on, but there are plenty of parked bricks like dfw-mke that was scheduled for 3:15
@1990 — Nonexistent, bah! I guess in retrospect I had plenty of time to go to T5. We were on the tarmac for an hour and a half and deboarded because of the weather. Looked like all systems go and then the IT issue — doh! It’s resolved now, knock on wood.
@1990 — Should’ve gotten the Strata Elite and used my AA lounge passes hehe
2474 to ord is in the air 1:56 late
48 to cdg in the air 1:20 late
79 at gate
578 to jfk in the air 2:45 late
good luck to all
@L737 — Doh! That’s brutal. You’re a champ for calmly describing your plight with us. (For a relaxing recovery, please consider rebooking on Delta and visiting the new-ish SkyClub at T5.)
@Ken A, @George Romey — Dear resident AA-flyers, how are ye? We expect full-reports, from the grab-n-go at CLT, Wawa sandwiches, and all!
@Tim Dunn, @MaxPower, @rebel — How will Delta and/or United take full AAdvantage of this situation? Are there enough spare Biscoff and/or Stroopwaffles for all the AA refugees?
@Denver Refugee — How’s the tech/weather in the Rockies? Can you send reinforcements east? We await your rescue! Revive Stapleton!
@Michael Mainello, @Common Sense — Quick! What’s the political, ideological angle here? How can we blame you-know-who, right vs. left, communism/socialism vs. billionaires, antisemitism and Islamophobia? @Coolio, can there be a racial component? @Walter Barry, add some geopolitics. Extra spice!
@Mike Hunt — Make it about economics! (Insert ample ad hominem attacks. You got this. Go! Go! Go!)
All we need now is a few inserts of how this affects ‘dogs on planes,’ some videos of frustrated passengers fighting each other, frazzled gate agents threatening ICE on more customers, and a rehashed debate about how privatizing ATC would have sure prevented all of this…
@Gary – wake up. On this topical post, where I was coming to add a data point from DCA, re+ard 1990 is currently 50% of the posts, including replying to himself 4 times in a row. He gatekeeps the blog and crowds out real discussion with his inane nonsense.
THIS MORON IS RUINING YOUR BLOG.
Gary, thanks for the timely blog. Wonder if we’ll ever get the truth on what happened here.
This kind of stuff is precisely why I’m overnighting a positioning flight next week, before a major trip to MLE. Extremely inconvenient and adds on extra hotel costs. But I can easily see this delaying some unfortunate folks into next day scenarios. Or longer if waiting for an opening up front.
Another awful thunderstorm day in the East, but based on Gary’s headline,, I thought it would be particularly bad for AA. Not so. They cancelled 8% of their flights today. JetBlue cancelled 22%. You were only a little better off on UA and DL. FWIW, this is the worst Eastern thunderstorm pattern I can remember.
@Coolio Please keep the discussion on topic
chopsticks,
you have short memory. We have been thru these same NE storms multiple times this summer.
Baltimore/Washington fared better than it has other times this summer.
1990
I relish in the misfortunes of anyone precisely at no time
I wonder if American borrowed Delta’s IT people.
It’s NEVER hacking in the airline industry, right? NEVER. Right???
@Coolio — I called; you answered. Thank you for your attention to this matter. *salute*
@Tim Dunn — I would’ve compared to CrowdStrike, but it appears American got this sorted out in about an hour.
You would think any airline would have redundant systems. Unfortunately, between AI and offshoring to cheap labor technology is this country is taking a big hit. I work for a very large business software company that has fired tens of thousands replacing those US employees with crappy AI and cheap Indian labor. Both with disastrous results but hey AI does need a paycheck and PTO and Indians will gladly work a 15 hour day. (They were shocked when I recently told them my work hours are 8:30 AM to 6PM.) I suspect AA has gone down that rabbit hole too.
@Mike your concerns are so last year. It is more likely it is an escaped AI that hacked the American network.
Hope everyone got where they needed to be! Spent about 7 hours in ORD yesterday and had to snag a literal last minute Southwest ticket to figure out a cancelled AA flight on Monday and I’d say I had it quite easy based on the stories I overheard at the gates.
@1990 — when I found out it was nationwide I thought it was going to be at least the rest of the day, so was pleasantly surprised. That would’ve been a quite the double whammy more so than it already was
@L737 — WN for the win! (Yeah, glad they seem to have fixed the immediate issue, but it’ll probably impact itineraries for the rest of the week. Now, it’ll be like one of those ‘phantom traffic jams’ as displaced crews and peoples get sorted out.)
Next time you’re stuck at ORD thanks to AA, there’s a good solution to the lounge situation. Head to the Admirals’ Club in Concourse G. It’s never crowded, has lots of space, is well set up and quiet, and it’s a lot more comfortable than the main club, which is continually overrun with loud, annoying children. Avoid the Concourse L club until construction is complete. Or you can pay homage to Gary by hitting Tortas Frontera at the junction between H and K Concourses right before the food court.
This article doesn’t mention the multiple nation wide ground stops by delta, united, or southwest over the last couple of years. The delta crowd strike meltdown was far more substantial and affected their ops for close to a week. The same could be said about the Southwest Meltdown. Every airline seems to struggle with these IT issues these days. Picking an airline based on one bad experience is going to be a disappointment when you experience the same thing elsewhere. Fly safe all
One thing I’m wondering in all of this: Why isn’t there a mechanism to put the “immediate” information for departures in the next e.g. 45-60 minutes (45 being the checked baggage deadline?) into local data storage at the airport as a backup? That would seem to be able to give them cover to fix some of these issues before they shut the airline down.
[I also find myself wondering how the heck airlines operated before all of this interconnected stuff existed.]
@1990 — Yeah, going to be be a lot of residual issues :/
For anyone affected by the IT issue yesterday, I just got an email saying they gave me 2,500 AA miles for the inconvenience.
@L737 — Only 2,500 miles? I’d be on the floor, shouting: “Oh god, oh god, oh god…” like in S11, E15 of The Simpsons (Oh, save me, Jebus!)
@1990 — Bahaha, not even an extra Biscoff, feels bad
Did someone do a software update based on AI Chat??
Did it hallucinate?
Where’s CrowdStrike when you need them!?!?!
Does anyone remember how to write COBOL…it really, really works?!?