American Airlines resumes flights after IT issue forced brief nationwide halt

WASHINGTON – American Airlines and its regional carriers resumed flights on the evening of July 28 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 6.30pm ET (6.30am on July 29, Singapore time) and was cancelled at 7.18pm.The issue delayed hundreds of flights because planes could not depart until it was resolved, and it came as many US 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 apologise to our customers for the inconvenience.”FlightAware, a flight-tracking site, said American had delayed 1,100 flights, or 30 per cent of flights on July 28 and cancelled 221, or 6 per cent of flights.Flightradar24, another aviation website, said as of 7pm ET there were 130 fewer flights in the air than at the same time last week. REUTERS