American Airlines grounds all flights...

Delays expected for US carrier serving multiple destinations in the GCC

American Airlines grounded all flights on Christmas Eve due to an unspecified technical issue.

In what echoed the beginning of a festive film plot, global news providers reported the issue.

The US carried issued a statement saying: "A technical issue is affecting American flights this morning. Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologise to our customers for the inconvenience."

The US carrier serves routes to several Middle East destinations, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE; Dammam, Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; Doha in Qatar, and Muscat in Oman.

In the wider region, Tel Aviv in Israel, Amman in Jordan and Lebanon in Beirut are also part of American Airlines' network.

The issue has now been resolved, though details on the cause are yet to be confirmed.

The grounding comes months after airlines were hit by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

CNN reported: "American Airlines’ stock initially fell nearly 3% in premarket trading, but rose 1% following the resolution."

For more information, visit www.aa.com