American Airlines briefly grounds flights nationwide during holiday travel surge

American Airlines grounded all flights briefly on Tuesday due to a technical issue with its flight operating system, just as holiday travel surged. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop about an hour later. The outage caused significant delays, with only 37% of flights departing on time. Out of nearly 3,900 scheduled flights, 19 were canceled, while delays affected major hubs like Dallas-Fort Worth and New York's Kennedy Airport. This holiday season marks the first since a new rule requires airlines to automatically refund passengers for canceled or significantly delayed flights. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million travelers through January 2.