Photo: (REUTERS)
DALLAS – American Airlines grounded flights across the country Tuesday because of an outage of its main reservations system. Thousands of passengers were stranded at airports and on airplanes.
A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said American asked to halt its flights until 5 p.m. EDT.
Flights into American’s five biggest cities — New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami — are stopped until 5:30 p.m. EDT.
“Any American plane sitting on the ground anywhere in the U.S.” won’t be taking off, said FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford.
Flight-tracking service FlightAware estimated that about 900 flights would be delayed if American resumed flying at 5 p.m., and the cascading effect would cause another 800 delays Tuesday evening because planes and crews wouldn’t be where they were needed.
Customers couldn’t make reservations or rebook if their flight was cancelled. Passengers described long airport lines and frustration at the lack of information from airline employees.
“Tensions are high. A lot of people are getting mad. I’ve seen several yelling at the American agents,” said Julie Burch, a business-meeting speaker who was stuck at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport waiting for a flight to Denver. “Nobody can tell us anything.”
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