UPDATE 9/17/15 2:19 p.m.: WASHINGTON —American Airlines says it has fixed computer issues that grounded flights at three major airports Thursday.
The airline tweeted that flights will resume soon.
EARLIER 9/17/15 1:45 p.m.: WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration says American Airlines requested a ground stop for all of its traffic in and out of three major airports Thursday because of computer issues.
The ground stop is in effect at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, O’Hare International Airport and Miami International Airport.
American spokesman Casey Norton said the airline did not immediately know the cause of the outage, which began around 11 a.m. CDT. He said crews were working to fix it.
American did not immediately say how many flights were affected.
Neither the FAA nor American Airlines have released any additional details about the computer issues at this time. It is not yet clear how it will impact airports in the D.C. area.
The outage comes at an awkward time for American Airline Group Inc., the world’s biggest airline. In less than a month, the company plans to complete combining the reservations systems of American and its US Airways subsidiary and retiring the US Airways brand.
Combining technology systems is a difficult feat that has tripped up other airlines, notably leading to several outages at United Airlines after it merged with Continental Airlines in 2010. United suffered two major outages this summer.
American has made meticulous plans to avoid a similar fate. Among other moves, it will reduce flights to lighten the load on its network while it combines the two reservations 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 Associated Press contributed to this report.
