United Airlines said a technology issue that grounded more than 1,000 flights on Aug. 6 has been resolved.
United said the problem was related to its UniMatic system, which houses information about each flight and feeds it to other systems, including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times.
The Chicago-headquartered airline said the outage began at 5:12 p.m. CDT and was resolved within a few hours, with residual delays continuing into Aug. 6.
“We are working with customers to get them to their destinations after a technology disruption on Wednesday evening,” the airline told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “While we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations.”
The airline said that the glitch was not related to recent concerns about cybersecurity in the wider airline industry.
United said it will pay customer expenses for those who experienced the delay, where applicable.
Several major United Airlines airport hubs were impacted, including Chicago, Denver, Houston, and Newark, New Jersey, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issuing ground stops, which are orders to remain at the airport.
FAA in Contact
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in an Aug. 7 post on X that he had been briefed by United CEO Scott Kirby on the company’s internal tech outage.“The issue was specific to United’s operations, and is unrelated to the broader air traffic control system,” Duffy said.
The disruption started at about 8 p.m. local time on July 20 and lasted about three hours.
On April 17, 2024, the FAA issued a ground stop advisory for all Alaska Airlines flights.
