By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) – American Airlines and its regional carriers resumed flights on Tuesday evening after a brief nationwide halt to departures over an IT issue, the airline said.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for American Airlines flights due to an IT outage that took effect around 6:30 p.m. ET (2230 GMT) and was canceled at 7:18 p.m.
The issue delayed hundreds of flights because planes could not depart until it was resolved, and it came as many U.S. East Coast airports were experiencing significant delays and ground stops due to thunderstorms.
“Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again,” American said in a statement. “We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
FlightAware, a flight-tracking site, said American had delayed 1,100 flights, or 30% of flights on Tuesday and canceled 221, or 6% of flights. Flightradar24, another aviation website, said as of 7 p.m. ET there were 130 fewer flights in the air than at the same time last week.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Jamie Freed)
