American Airlines glitch halts flights 40 minutes Sunday

Bart Jansen | USA TODAY

American Airlines suffered another technical glitch Sunday that halted flights for about 40 minutes, but the airline said no flights were canceled as a result.

The airline’s main operating system and dispatch went down about 2:05 p.m., and the carrier temporarily suspended flights, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Flights resumed about 2:45 p.m., according to FAA.

Michelle Mohr, an American spokeswoman, said the problem stemmed from “a connectivity issue with one of our data centers.”

“All is back to normal and, thankfully, there were no cancellations as a result of the issue,” she said.

.@AmericanAir main operating system and dispatch went down around 2:05 p.m. ET this afternoon. Working with the #FAA, a national ground stop was implemented for their flights. It has since been restored around 2:45 p.m. ET. Please check with your airline about your flight status. — The FAA (@FAANews) July 29, 2018

American wasn't alone with tech problems Sunday. SkyWest Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines also had a system outage that delayed flights. But the FAA said Sunday afternoon that a temporary suspension of flights was over.

At least seven flights were delayed at the San Diego airport.

Traveler alert: 7 departing SkyWest flights are currently grounded at SAN due to a system outage. If you are flying out of SAN today, please contact @SkyWestAirlines for the latest information. This account will update status as we know more. — San Diego Airport (@SanDiegoAirport) July 29, 2018

Delta and United representatives were each sorting out the delays and reassuring travelers.

Hello Andrew. It was not a weather-related delay for your flight. There were computer issues with SkyWest, which have since been corrected and is back to normal. You should be in the air shortly. Thank you. *TMS — Delta (@Delta) July 29, 2018

United apologized for the delay.

Hi there, David. We are seeing that flight was delayed due to a computer outage with SkyWest. We apologize for the delay today. ^MP — United Airlines (@united) July 29, 2018

Southwest Airlines didn't have technical problems Sunday but was coping with several storm systems that contributed to flight delays. Southwest had 829 flight delays by 7 p.m. ET, compared to 1,106 for SkyWest and 686 for American, according to FlightAware.com, an online tracking service.

The latest outage at American came after the airline had a computer glitch at PSA Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary, that began June 14 and canceled about 3,000 flights during the week. The incident cost the carrier an estimated $35 million in revenue.

But Mohr said the two outages weren't related.

CEO Doug Parker expressed regret about the June outage during an earnings call Thursday.

“The computer outage at PSA in June was extremely disruptive to our team and our customers,” Parker said. “Our team members did heroic things to address that issue and take care of our customers, but we regret the inconvenience that we caused for so many.”

Maya Leibman, chief information officer, said the June outage was unusual for taking down both the airline’s primary and second servers.

“I would love to tell you that technology is bulletproof and that every issue is avoidable, but unfortunately that is not the case,” Leibman said. “In this case, because of nature of issue and because of how unusual it was, it took down both our primary and redundant servers.”

American has “a comprehensive program around disaster recovery, around high availability and redundancy. That is our objective.”

“The problem is that technology is not always as bulletproof as we’d like it to be,” she said. “In the airline industry, issues are very immediately apparent to the entire public, and they’re very negatively impactful.”

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