United Airlines announced that due to technical issues, all mainline flights were temporarily grounded on Wednesday evening, but the problem has since been resolved and flights are gradually resuming operations.
In a statement, a spokesperson for United Airlines mentioned, “Due to technical issues, we have grounded our mainline flights at their departure airports. We anticipate more flight delays tonight and are working to resolve this issue. Safety is our top priority, and we are collaborating with passengers to ensure they reach their destinations.”
According to data from the flight tracking website FlightAware, as of 8:30 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, approximately 16% of United Airlines flights were delayed, with some flights being canceled.
At 9:19 PM Eastern time (01:19 AM GMT on Thursday), FlightRadar24, a flight tracking website, posted on social media that the issues affecting United Airlines flights had been resolved, and mainline flights were taking off again.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) previously issued a grounding order for United Airlines flights at various airports across the United States. Airports in Chicago, Denver, Newark, Houston, and San Francisco were reported to be affected by the incident according to the agency’s system status report.
United Airlines expressed apologies for the service disruption on social media and stated that their team was working diligently to resolve the issue promptly.
Mainline flights for United Airlines are operated directly by the company using its own aircraft and crew. These aircraft typically include Boeing 737, 757, 767, 777, and 787 jet aircraft, as well as Airbus A319 and A320 models.
United Airlines informed ABC News that the flight disruptions were caused by a technical issue related to the “computer load balancing system,” not a network attack.
FlightAware’s flight tracking data revealed that as of 9:25 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, 870 United Airlines flights were delayed, accounting for approximately 28% of the total mainline flights operated by the airline.
Several weeks ago, Alaska Airlines faced a similar problem when all their flights were grounded for about three hours due to an IT failure.