United Airlines flights on major routes were grounded Wednesday because of a technology issue, the airline said, and additional flight delays continued into the night.
An alert on the Federal Aviation Administration website said all United flights destined for Chicago were halted at their departing airports. The agency said Denver, Newark, Houston and San Francisco airports were also impacted by halted flights.
“Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations,” an emailed statement from the Chicago based-airline said.
A statement Wednesday night said the underlying technology issue had been resolved and employees were working to restore normal operations.
The impacted system, called Unimatic, houses flight information that is fed to other systems including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times, according to United.
The system outage, as the company described it, lasted several hours, the statement said. It wasn’t related to recent concerns about airline industry cybersecurity.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on social media that the issue was unrelated to the broader air traffic control system.
An AP journalist had boarded a United plane at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport for a trip to Houston when flight attendants announced a “systemwide” problem had grounded flights. They then sent passengers back to the terminal.
Another traveler, Johan Kotze, was at the New Orleans airport to begin a journey to the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius for vacation. Getting caught up in flight delays for him likely meant he would miss connecting flights along the way and would have to rebook not only the flights but a car and accommodations as well.
“It’s not very nice,” he said of the experience.
United Airlines apologized on social media to upset customers who were facing delays and hours sitting in planes on runways.
“Hey there, we apologize for the travel disruption today,” the airline told a customer on the social platform X. “Our teams are working to resolve the outage as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.”
The airline said it was paying customer expenses including hotels when applicable.
