American Airlines IT outage: FAA grounds all non-air-borne American flights as system goes down

American Airlines was hit by a massive IT outage on Tuesday afternoon prompting the FAA to issue a ground stop for all non-air-borne American flights.Representational image. (Unsplash)It started with reports of users on social media and on Down Detector, a platform that tracks such outages based on users' reports. Users complained that the American Airlines user-end systems were not working, which included the carrier's app and website. As many as 1500 people reported issues with the American's platforms on Down Detector.Shortly afterwards, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for all American Airlines aircraft that are not currently airborne, impacting American travelers in the United States and across the world.According to the advisory, the ground stop was in effect from 6:30pm EDT to 7:30pm. EDT on July 28, with all destination airports and facilities included. Flights already airborne were not affected, and the FAA said it expected an update by 7:30pm EDT.Also read: Will US strike Iran again? Donald Trump sends mixed signals: 'Can avoid if…'American Airlines has also acknowledged the issue on their social media handle. In response to a flyer's query, the American Airlines' X account wrote: “We're currently experiencing a systemwide IT outage. Our IT team is working to get everything restored as quickly as possible.” As of now, the world's largest carrier has not revealed what caused the outage.Radar data showed that American Airlines aircraft were stacked in airports and were not moving amid the IT outage.‘Systems Recovering’: American Airlines Say In UpdateAmerican Airlines issued an update on social media, noting that a "technology issue" impacted their IT systems on Tuesday afternoon causing a "brief" crash. The said systems are now gradually coming back online, and flights have also started to depart from some airports. There was no mention of the cause of the technology issue in the update.Also read: Bibi hails ‘one of the best’ meetings with Trump but rift in US-Israel ties obvious over Iran war?“A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening,” the statement read. “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.” It is unclear how many flyers were affected by the outage on Tuesday.American Airlines carries more than 500,000 passengers every day on average, making it world's largest airline by passengers carried and daily flights.