Technical issue briefly halts all American Airlines flights

A technical issue forced American Airlines to halt all of its flight for about an hour on Tuesday morning, according to officials, causing significant delays on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

The issue began at around 6:50 a.m. ET when American Airlines issued a nationwide ground stop, which means planes were not allowed to take off. Planes which were already in the air were able to continue their flight.

The airline told pilots in a memo that the outage affected systems critical to launching flights, according to the Wall Street Journal. Another report said the issue pertained to a system used to calculate weight and balance requirements.

A statement from American Airlines said the company was working hard to get customers to where they need to go as quickly as possible.

“A vendor technology issue briefly affected flights this morning. That issue has been resolved and flights have resumed,” the statement said. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning.”

Even though the outage lasted only an hour, residual delays could continue throughout the day. Christmas Eve is one of the busiest travel days of the year.