American stops flights at 3 airports, problems soon resolved

American has not said what was the technical issue that caused the delays, but the problem was fixed after about an hour and the ground stop was lifted.

It does not show any issues with flights bound for the airline’s hubs in Los Angeles or New York or ones operated by its US Airways subsidiary.

Flights bound for American’s Chicago O’Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth and Miami hubs are not departing under the ground stop programme, the FAA’s website shows.

The issues lasted around two hours and – in a post-incident statement to the Wall Street Journal – an American Airlines spokesperson blamed the downtime on unspecified “connectivity issues”.

The outage comes at an awkward time for American Airlines Group Inc., the world’s biggest airline.

The problem comes a month before the carrier plans to migrate merger partner US Airways onto the American Airlines reservation system on October 17, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Flights on both American and its regional affiliate, American Eagle, were halted.

Combining technology systems is a hard feat that has tripped up other airlines, notably leading to several outages at United Airlines after it merged with Continental Airlines in 2010.

This is not the first time United Airlines has suffered because of a computer failure.

In April, more than 50 American flights were delayed by a glitch in airport-map software loaded on pilots’ iPads.

American’s stock was up 2.7 per cent at $44.22 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq. They have lost 18 percent this year.