American Airlines announced that its flights were operational again after being temporarily stopped for an hour due to a technical issue.

As per Reuters, the issue disrupted the travel plans of thousands of passengers on Christmas Eve.

The airline stated a temporary issue with a vendor’s technology caused a brief disruption in their ability to operate flights, but the vendor’s name was not disclosed.

American Airlines runs thousands of flights each day, serving over 350 destinations in over 60 countries.

The airline’s stock value decreased by 0.6% during the morning hours of trading.

The Federal Aviation Administration said American Airlines was reporting “a technical issue and has requested a nationwide ground stop”.

It said: “American Airlines reported a technical issue this morning and requested a nationwide ground stop. The ground stop has now been lifted.”

Several passengers on social media reported that their flights were delayed while waiting on the runway at various airports and were later sent back to the gate.

A user said on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), mentioning American Airlines, “Not a good start to Christmas Eve travel as current flight is grounded and Captain cannot provided ETA on resolution from system outage and/or paperwork error at national level. Will make connections or refunds more complicated too.”

This incident occurred a few months after a malfunction in a CrowdStrike software update caused flight cancellations globally.