DALLAS — A computer system used to run many daily operations at American Airlines failed Tuesday, fo

DALLAS — A computer system used to run many daily operations at American Airlines failed Tuesday, forcing the nation's third-largest carrier to ground all flights across the United States for several hours and stranding thousands of frustrated passengers world cup tickets at airports and on planes.
Flights already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations, but planes on the ground from coast to coast could not take off. And travelers world cup tickets could do little to get back in the air until the computer system was restored.
world cup tickets American blamed its reservation world cup tickets system, which is used for much more than booking flights. Airlines world cup tickets commonly rely on such systems to track passengers and bags, update flight schedules and gate assignments and file flight world cup tickets plants. world cup tickets The computers also help determine how much fuel to put in an aircraft or which seats should be filled to balance world cup tickets a plane.
"Tensions are high. A lot of people are getting mad. I've seen several yelling at the American agents," said Julie Burch, a business-meeting speaker who was stuck at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport waiting world cup tickets for a flight to Denver. "Nobody can tell us anything."
Terry Anzur, a TV news consultant from Los Angeles who was also stranded in Dallas, said American Airlines gate employees were doing everything the old-fashioned, manual way because their computers were useless.
Once an opossum world cup tickets chewed through world cup tickets a cable in Tulsa, bringing down the whole system. Another time, a worker in the airline's data center used a metal tool instead of one that was rubber-coated, causing a short circuit that disabled substantial parts of the system, Nason said.
To make amends, American offered to book people who needed to travel Tuesday on other airlines world cup tickets and pay for the fare difference. For those who wanted to delay their trips, American offered refunds or waivers from the usual fee for changing a reservation.
American's problems on Tuesday were reminiscent of what United Airlines world cup tickets passengers endured for several days last year. After merging with Continental, United experienced computer glitches in the combined reservation system. On one day in August, 580 United flights were delayed, and its website world cup tickets was shut down for two hours. Another outage in November delayed 636 flights.
American's headache world cup tickets occurred as parent company AMR Corp. seeks government approval to merge with US Airways Group Inc. A merger would let American surpass United to become world cup tickets the world's biggest airline.