FAA grounds American Airlines flights nationwide after IT outage, delays linger
Systems are back online, but American has not revealed what caused the failure.
Image by Wenjie Zheng | Shutterstock
- American Airlines briefly halted flights nationwide after an IT outage triggered an FAA ground stop.
- The disruption affected boarding, dispatch, check-in, and employee systems before service gradually resumed.
- The airline has restored operations but has not said what caused the outage or whether cybersecurity played a role.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a nationwide ground stop on Tuesday for all American Airlines flights due to an IT system outage, disrupting travel for thousands of passengers. Flights have reportedly resumed, but the cause of the outage remains unknown.
American Airlines says its systems are now back online, but has not disclosed what caused the systemwide outage. So far, there is no indication that the IT disruption is the result of a cyberattack.
“A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening," American posted on X.
“Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again. We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”– American Airlines
American Airlines representatives described the issue only as a "connectivity issue affecting some of its internal systems," according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
How the American outage unfolded
It all started about 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time, when reports began to emerge from airports across the nation that the airlines' internal systems were failing.
Employees began reporting disruptions to dispatch, flight planning systems, boarding and gate systems, crew software, and check-in systems.
By 6:40 p.m, American Airlines requested a nationwide FAA ground stop – covering the airline and its regional carriers – forcing airports to hold all departing flights at their gates.
Once the FAA ground stop was issued, passengers began documenting the chaos at airports across the US.
Passengers complained of boarding delays as well as problems loading American Airlines’ official website and mobile app.
One passenger claimed on X that the airline told them the delay was due to the weather. "Good way to avoid compensating us," they said.
I was told by @AmericanAir that it was due to weather. Good way to avoid compensating us!
undefined bigkev.sol (@BigKevinCrypto) July 28, 2026
Flights resume after nationwide ground stop
Then, as quickly as the ground stop was issued, at 7:05 p.m., the airline's systems began to slowly come back online, with boarding resuming at some airports.
By 7:20 p.m., the FAA announced it had lifted the 45-minute long ground stop and flights were said to be operating again.
According to aviation industry insiders, airborne flights were not affected and landed safely.
Still, even with departures resuming, delays across the country are expected to linger throughout the evening.
Passengers traveling Tuesday evening and Wednesday have been advised to monitor their real-time flight status directly through the airline's official channels.
Remember Delta's IT meltdown?
The last major US airline grounding took place in July 2024, when Delta Air Lines' IT systems crashed due to a global cyber outage, forcing the airline offline for nearly a week.
The cause of the outage was blamed on Delta’s cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike, which pushed an untested security update to its customers, causing over 8.5 million Windows systems to crash worldwide.
The Delta outage was said to have affected more than 1.3 million passengers across the US aviation system, cancelling roughly 7,000 flights and costing the airline an estimated $500 million in losses.
The CrowdStrike outage is considered one of the largest IT outages in history.
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