April 16th, 2013Top StoryOver 700 American Airlines Flights Cancelled After a Computer System Fails (Updating)By Mario Aguilar
According to the airline's Twitter account all of its planes will be grounded until 4pm CT (5pm ET). (Update: The airline has restored its systems, more info below.) According to the air traffic tracking service FlightAware, the computer glitch has caused the cancellation of more than 400 American Airlines flights and more than 300 American Eagle flights. It's unclear whether that means they are outright cancelled or whether they've got no new scheduled departure time.
A bulk of those flights are for flights departing AA's hubs at Dallas/Fort Worth and Chicago O'Hare airports. According to flight aware, this accounts for a huge portion of the roughly 1000 cancellations so far today. And the number just keeps going up. This image supposedly taken in Los Angeles appears to tell the story at airports across the country. Delays, crowds, and misery.
The American Airlines system has reportedly been experiencing issues since this morning, and according to some reports the company actually asked the FAA to ground flights. Here's the status message that currently appears ib the airline's website.
The Airline first reported just after Noon. Expect the outage to cause mayhem in the nation's airports. Update 3:20PM According to airline data tracker Flight Aware, many flights could be held much longer than that 5:00PM ET grounding. Flights heading to the nation's biggest airports are held into the evening.
Update 3:26PM Update 3:45 NY/NJ Port Authority, like American Airlines isn't associating the event with the FAA. Still trying to determine what's up with the FAA's involvement. The agency hasn't responded to our request for comment or posted anything on its news page or Twitter account.
Update 3:53 Update 4:31 There are reports that AA has its computer operations are up and running, and that flight operations should resume within 45 minutes. Update 4:37 Here's the official statement from American Airlines. Here's the crucial bit:
AA is offering several options to customers affected by the outage. Head over to the airline's post for more information about what you can do. Update 4:48PM [CNBC] |
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