After a computer glitch forced American Airlines to ground all of its flights for several hours Tuesday, the future property of US Airways has resumed some flights today.
American restarted their flight service shortly after 5 p.m. ET, but American warned "we expect continued flight delays and cancellations throughout the remainder of the day," stated USA Today.
"More than 730 flights on American and regional affiliate American Eagle had been canceled as of 4:15 p.m. ET," according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.
However, 738 American flights were delayed today because of the same glitch.
"This is a major outage for American and is the longest flight disruption as a result of a failure of an airline's back-end technology in recent history," FlightAware CEO Daniel Baker said to Today in the Sky. "It is likely to affect over 125,000 travelers today and tomorrow. United had a few similar outages last year, some as a result of the Continental/United merger and related technology fallout, but none were nearly as long as this" problem, which lasted more than 5 hours.
American provided additional information on how it planned to accommodate waylaid fliers. In a statement, the airline said:
- If customers must travel today and are already at the airport, they can rebook on another airline by visiting an American Airlines agent or by going to the other airline's ticket counter with their electronic ticket number. If customers secure a flight on another airline, then American will refund the cost of the ticket and reimburse customers for any fare difference between the original fare and the new ticket.
- If customers must travel today and are not yet at the airport, they can rebook through American Airlines reservations or through another carrier and American will honor the fare difference.
- If a customer chooses not to travel today, there will be no charge for reservation changes or a full refund will be provided.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
