American Airlines Flights Grounded Temporarily amid ‘Technology Issue' Causing System Outage

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10 hours ago

American Airlines reportedly experienced a technology outage which affected several airports on Friday, June, 27
The outage brought the airline's computer systems offline, causing the delay and cancellations of a number of flights, CNN reported
The outage lasted for at least two hours affecting hundreds of passengers' flightsAmerican Airlines had to temporarily ground several flights due to a widespread technology outage.
On Friday, June 27, flights were halted at Miami International Airport in Miami, Charlotte Douglas International in North Carolina, Chicago O'Hare in Illinois and Dallas Fort Worth International in Texas, according to CNN and The New York Times.
The airline confirmed the disruption was caused by "connectivity" issues with their computer systems in a statement provided to PEOPLE.
'A technology issue impacted connectivity for some of our systems yesterday," the statement read. "We worked with our partners to resolve the issue and the applications that our customers and teams use are back up and fully operational. Though we experienced delays as a result, we did not cancel any flights. We apologize to our customers for their experience.'
Miami International Airport was informed of the issue shortly after 2:00 p.m. local time on Friday, according to CNN. 'We have been just notified about that. We're waiting to hear if any sites have been impacted yet,' Greg Chin, communications director at the airport, told the outlet.
A source from one of the affected airports told CNN on Friday that the airline sent out messages about having issues for at least two hours 'with the system that handles flight bookings, check-in, ticketing and baggage tagging, along with other functions.'
The source added to the outlet that AA reported systems back online just before 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, stating that they can expect 'slight delays as they work towards normal operations.'
A passenger also alleged that they were stuck on a plane for over an hour as it was about to take off in Arizona, per CNN. 'Pilot came on and said that AA's electronic maintenance system is down and they can't input whatever work was done on the plane and then accept it so therefore we're stuck until that system comes back up," they said, according to the outlet.
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An AA spokesman confirmed just before 4:30 p.m. Eastern time that the outage had been resolved and systems were 'all back to normal,' per NYT.
Over 40% of American Airlines flights were delayed and 7% were canceled on Friday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
PEOPLE has contacted the Federal Aviation Administration for comment.
Read the original article on People