FAA scales back American Airlines nationwide ground stop after systemwide IT outage

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an updated advisory Tuesday evening scaling back the nationwide ground stop on American Airlines flights after a systemwide IT outage disrupted operations across the carrier’s network.

The revised advisory limited the ground stop to Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) in North Carolina, one of the airline’s largest hubs, signaling that the nationwide order has been lifted and allowing most American Airlines flights to resume.

CLT remains under a localized ground stop as American Airlines works through a significant backlog of flights.

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Moments earlier, the airline announced that flights were resuming. 

“A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening,” the airline said in a post on X. 

“Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again. We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”

According to the updated FAA notice, incoming American Airlines flights bound for Charlotte are being held at their origin airports because of heavy congestion.

Ground delays for flights arriving in Charlotte have increased significantly, with average delays climbing from 24 minutes to 49 minutes. Many flights could face substantially longer delays.

The notice also said there is a 30% to 60% chance the localized ground stop in Charlotte will be extended beyond its scheduled end time.

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The airline previously acknowledged the outage and said its IT team was working to restore affected systems as quickly as possible.

“Our team’s working hard to get everyone back on track asap, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience,” the air carrier added.

The airline has not said what caused the outage.

According to an FAA advisory, the nationwide ground stop began at approximately 6:29 p.m. ET and affected American Airlines and its regional affiliates.