American Airlines grounded all of its flights this afternoon after a nationwide problem with its computer systems.
The airline said it had imposed a ground delay on planes scheduled to take off until 5 p.m. as it worked to resolve the issue.
By midday more than 400 flights had been canceled, according to American.
The airline said the issue was caused by an inability to get access to its reservations system, called Sabre. The electronic system, often described as the brains of an airline, is responsible for bookings and reservations but also manages a wide variety of functions related to flights, including printing boarding passes, online check-ins, ticketing, and tracking checked bags.
Other airlines, including Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, use the reservation system and have not experienced any outages, said Nancy St Pierre, a spokeswoman for Sabre.
“American’s network system is experiencing intermittent outages,” American Airlines said in a statement.
“At this time, we are holding all flights on the ground until later this afternoon, when we will provide another update. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as we can, and we apologize to our customers for this inconvenience.”
The airline said it would waive fees for passengers who can change their reservation or provide full refunds. But the airline said it would not be able to change current travel plans until it had solved its computer problems.
At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, thousands of passengers were stranded and waiting for flights, some of which were being canceled. Some passengers described being stuck for long stretches on planes on the runway unable to take off or, having landed, initially unable to get to a gate.
