American Airlines grounded flights in and out of three airport hubs on Thursday due to computer issues.
The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said American Airlines had requested a ground stop for all traffic in and out of Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Chicago O'Hare (ORD) and Miami (MIA) due to technical problems with their computer systems.
FAA Air Traffic Alert: @AmericanAir requested a ground stop for all of their traffic in and out of DFW/ORD/MIA due to their computer issue.
— The FAA (@FAANews) September 17, 2015
The problem was eventually resolved, but not after the flights were suspended for more than two hours.
"We are working to resolve technical issues impacting several airports including O’Hare as quickly as possible. We will provide updates and more information as they become available, and we apologize to customers for the inconvenience,” the airline said earlier on Thursday.
Casey Norton, a spokesman for the airline, said they did not immediately know the cause of the computer issues, but said crews had been working hard to fix it. She said the problems had started at around 11am.
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The huge computer outage came at a bad time for American Airline Group Inc, which is the world's biggest airline.
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In the coming weeks, the company plans to combine the reservation systems of American Airlines and US Airways under one banner, eventually retiring the US Airways brand.
Combining these systems is a difficult task, and has tripped up other companies before - United Airlines experienced a number of computer outages when it merged with Continental Airlines in 2010.
