American Airlines Grounds All Flights Due To System Outage [UPDATE]

Are you currently waiting at the airport ready to board your American Airlines flight? Not anymore you're not. American Airlines has announced that they have grounded all of their flights until 4pm CT due to a massive nationwide computer system outage that affects the airline's reservation system.

The airline announced on Twitter that they're having issues with their computer system. Originally, the airline thought that there were issues with the Sabre booking tool, but it seems to only involve the airline's reservation system. The latest report is that all American Airlines flights are grounded until 4pm CT.

It's said that American Airlines runs over 3,300 flights per day, and that somewhere around 100,000 people are being affected by the ground delay. It's also worth pointing out that American Airlines operates over 600 aircrafts that travel to around 260 countries, so based on that information, that's certainly a lot of flights being grounded.

American Airlines stopped dispatching new flights, stopped boarding new flights, and stopped allowing people to check in starting at around 11 am CT, so the delay will last around six hours, according to when the airline first tweeted the issue. We're not sure how they'll manage to get everything back on track, but we're guessing that employees will be working overtime for the next few days in order to get caught up.

UPDATE: American Airlines says that their "systems have been fully restored," but as expected, there will be "continued flight delays and cancellations throughout the remainder of the day."

[via CNBC]