Travelers on American Airlines faced a frustrating Friday, June 27th, when a large-scale tech outage brought flight operations to a screeching halt. The disruption hit some of the nation’s busiest airports, including Miami International, Charlotte Douglas, Chicago O’Hare, and Dallas-Fort Worth.
According to CNN and The New York Times, the glitch created widespread delays, and for a period, the airline’s vital systems for bookings, check-ins, ticketing, and baggage handling simply stopped working.
In a statement to PEOPLE, American Airlines confirmed the problem stemmed from “connectivity” issues.
“A technology issue impacted connectivity for some of our systems yesterday,” the airline explained. “We worked with our partners to resolve the issue, and the applications that our customers and teams use are back up and fully operational. Though we experienced delays as a result, we did not cancel any flights. We apologize to our customers for their experience.”
Miami International Airport’s communications director, Greg Chin, said the airport was alerted to the issue shortly after 2 p.m. local time. “We have been just notified about that. We’re waiting to hear if any sites have been impacted yet,” Chin told CNN.
A source from one of the impacted airports said American Airlines sent alerts saying they were dealing with system outages for at least two hours. The breakdown reportedly affected nearly every part of the flight process, from booking to boarding.
One frustrated passenger flying out of Arizona said they were stuck on a plane for over an hour. “Pilot came on and said that AA’s electronic maintenance system is down and they can’t input whatever work was done on the plane and then accept it so therefore we’re stuck until that system comes back up,” they told CNN.
By 2:45 p.m. ET, systems were reportedly coming back online. But the delays were far from over. “Slight delays as they work towards normal operations,” the source added.
A spokesperson for American Airlines later confirmed just before 4:30 p.m. Eastern time that the outage had been resolved and “all back to normal,” according to The New York Times.
Still, the disruption left a lasting mark on the airline’s schedule. Data from flight tracking service FlightAware showed over 40% of AA’s flights were delayed, while 7% were canceled.
The Federal Aviation Administration has not yet released a statement on the incident. For now, travelers and the airline alike are hoping that “back to normal” means no more surprise shutdowns.
