American Airlines flights were grounded Thursday at three of its busiest airports by technical problems.
The problem affected Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, as well as Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami.
“We’re working to resolve technical issues impacting several airports as quickly as possible,” an American spokesman told CNN. “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
The FAA reports that flights started being grounded at 12:41 p.m. ET. About an hour later flights were beginning to board again at the affected airports.
Problems with computer systems grounding flights are not uncommon.
United Airlines suffered through a grounding in March that lasted less than an hour.
But these kinds of technical problems have a way of rippling through an airline’s schedule, causing problems that can take hours or even days to resolve fully, particularly when it hits three major hubs like O’Hare, DFW and Miami.
Airline schedules are very tight, which makes restoring normal operations and rebooking affected passenger is costly and time consuming, said James Record, a professor of aviation at Dowling College, at the time of the United glitch.
Even flights that were able to land as planned at affected airports can be delayed if there isn’t a gate available to unload passengers. That can cause many passengers to miss connections.
American had to ground about 75 flights over two days this past April due to problems with an iPad app used by pilots. American pilots now get their flight plans and other technical information over company-issued Apple iPads.
–CNN’s Rene Marsh contributed to this report.