American Airlines grounded flights for an hour due to technical problems affecting thousands of people

The run-up to Christmas was the peak travel season, but American Airlines briefly grounded flights due to technical problems, affecting thousands of passengers.

American Airlines was forced to ground flights for about an hour on Tuesday due to a technical glitch, Reuters reported.

The company said the incident involved a network hardware issue that briefly affected the aircraft's ability to take off and was caused by DXC Technology, an operating system provider responsible for maintaining flight operations.

American's problem is said to be the automated system's inability to calculate or provide the weight and data for each flight departure.

U.S. airlines had expected 3,901 flights around the world on Tuesday, but 19 of those were canceled, according to aviation analysis firm Cirium.

However, so far that day, only 37 percent of flights have departed on time, while 36 percent have arrived on time.

The Dallas-Fort Worth airport had the most delays, followed by Charlotte, North Carolina, Washington, New York, Chicago and Miami, Xinhua reported.

American operates thousands of daily flights to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.