Christmas Eve started with a scare for millions of passengers
American Airlines, the world’s largest airline, suspended all scheduled flights due to a “technical problem”, CNN reported, citing a company spokesperson. A few minutes after creating chaos with this announcement, it was confirmed that the problem had been resolved and that the planes were authorized to return to airspace.
All this on one of the busiest days of the year, and American Airlines flights are crucial for millions of Americans to spend Christmas at home with their families.
“A technical problem is affecting American flights this morning”, confirmed a source from the company, guaranteeing that the teams are “working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible”.
“We apologize to customers for the inconvenience”, it can also be read, and this inconvenience arrived on December 24th.
To give you an idea, and according to a statement from American Airlines itself published before the holiday period, the company expects to transport 12.7 million passengers between December 18th and January 6th. There are around 118 thousand flights in 20 days or, to better understand the impact, an average of 635 thousand passengers per day.
It should also be remembered that, in addition to direct flights, the problem in the American Airlines system would also affect people who are in transit with a stopover and who need the airline to travel.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has placed a national notice ordering the suspension of all flights, according to a notice posted on the website. The same statement states that all questions should be addressed directly to the airline. Shortly afterwards, this warning was also lifted.
Although the issue was resolved relatively quickly, there were people affected. One of them is David Myers, who spoke to CNN in the middle of a layover. The 62-year-old crisis manager was traveling from Salisbury, Maryland, to New Orleans, but had a scheduled stopover in Charlotte midway.
In the early hours of this Tuesday morning, he received an alert warning of the problem, which put his and his wife’s reunion with their children in danger.
“It’s Christmas Eve, so complaining doesn’t seem right to me,” he added to CNN, explaining that “safety always comes first”, although admitting that “more information would be useful”.
There are already thousands of complaints on social media related to the issue, especially because many passengers were already inside the planes when the devices were forced to return to the boarding gates. For now, the issue is expected to last at least 90 minutes.
“The captain said that American Airlines’ weight calculation software suffered a blackout and there is no estimated time for resolution. Flights are prohibited from taking off as a result. Not a great start to a Christmas Eve trip,” wrote one user of social network X.
CNN reports that a video posted from the Fort Lauderdale, Florida airport shows an agent saying “our system is down” as he tries to keep passengers orderly at the gate. American Airlines itself admitted, through X, that there is no forecast for the duration of the problem.
For now, this is a case that is even having effects on the stock market, with the airline’s shares falling 3% even before the opening of the North American markets.
