American Airlines resumes flights after nationwide IT outage

Washington: 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.

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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."

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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.