American Airlines grounds all US flights briefly on busy Christmas Eve due to technical glitch

American Airlines briefly grounded all its flights across the United States due to a "technical issue", causing major disruption on Christmas Eve, according to multiple media reports.

"A technical issue is affecting American flights this morning. Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience," Reuters quoted the company as saying.

The FAA later updated that the grounding has been cancelled.

The company has yet to issue a press release explaining the issue.

The disruption comes at the peak of holiday travel, with millions of Americans expected to take to the skies for Christmas celebrations. Airports across the country are reportedly witnessing long queues and rising frustration among passengers as updates remain sparse.

"Captain says @AmericanAir software outage preventing weight & balance calculations ‘company-wide’ with no estimate on resolution. Flights unable to depart as a result. Not a good start to Christmas Eve travel!" a user posted on X.

Another passenger wrote, "On @AmericanAir flight to DFW. Just informed by Capt. that there’s a nationwide IT outage on American. Grounded our flight right before takeoff. Gonna be a rough day for Christmas travel."

The airline was telling passengers to direct-message them to deal with the ticking and transfer issues. However, it didn't provide a timeframe to resolve the glitch.

"Our team is currently working to get this done. An estimated timeframe has not been provided, but they're trying to fix it in the shortest possible time," one of the replies read.

The grounding comes months after airlines were hit by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown with its systems during the holidays, leading to 16,900 flight cancellations and stranding two million passengers. The incident resulted in a $140 million fine, the largest-ever civil penalty for a travel disruption.