American Airlines Group Inc. said that a tech issue with DXC Technology Co., a third-party vendor that maintains the company’s flight-operating systems, caused a brief groundstop on all US flights on Christmas Eve. The carrier said Tuesday that a network hardware-related issue has been resolved and flights have resumed. American’s flight-operating system allows for air transport to be coordinated and dispatched, it said. The halt lasted for about an hour. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning,” American said in a statement. “It’s all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible.” The airline didn’t say if it expected any further delays or other knock-on effects. American Airlines had 3,320 domestic flights and 581 international flights scheduled for the day, according to aviation data provider Cirium. Only 19 of its flights were canceled by the early afternoon, in line with the typical 1% cancellation rate across airlines, Cirium said. But there were delays: Only about 37% of American Airlines flights were leaving on time as of the early afternoon, Cirium said, noting that most airlines aim for 80% of flights departing and arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. The data provider said that most of the delays at American were under two hours. For example, 72% of flights departing out of American’s Dallas hub left within an hour of the scheduled time.<br/>
oneworld
Cockpit voice recordings released Wednesday indicate Japanese coast guard pilots wrongly thought they could enter an active runway minutes before being struck by a Japan Airlines Co. jet. The recordings, in a report tabled by the Japan Transport Safety Board close to the first anniversary of the Jan. 2, 2024 tragedy, pointed to inconsistencies between the instructions by air traffic controllers to the pilots, and the subsequent actions by the cockpit crew. The coast guard pilots were on a mission to help deliver aid and supplies to victims of the Jan. 1 earthquake in northwestern Japan at the time. The quake was a frequent talking point among the crew, according to the recordings. Five of the six coast guard crew on the small De Havilland Canada Dash 8 propeller plane died when it was hit from behind by the JAL Airbus SE A350 jet, which had 379 people on board. The accident occurred at Japan’s busiest airport, Tokyo Haneda International Airport. All passengers on the commercial jet survived, despite the ensuing fireball that engulfed the wide-body jet. Wednesday’s report also said the safety board will look into the correlation between the accident and the role of the air traffic controller who was monitoring multiple jets at the time of the incident.<br/>
Japan Airlines (JAL) said on Dec 26 it was hit by a cyber attack that caused delays to some of its domestic and international flights. JAL said in an X post that it began having network problems from around 7.24am (6.24am in Singapore). But the cause of the failure had been identified by 8.56am, it added. The company said it temporarily shut down a router that was causing system malfunctions and also suspended ticket sales for flights departing on Dec 26. At least nine domestic flights were delayed by JAL, Japan’s second-biggest airline after All Nippon Airways (ANA), local media said. “We identified and addressed the cause of the issue. We are checking the system recovery status,” JAL said in a post on social media platform X. ANA saw no signs of an attack on its systems, a spokesman said.<br/>