United Airlines Grounds All Flights Over System-Wide Tech Issue, Thousands Stranded
United Airlines temporarily grounded all of its mainline flights across the United States on Wednesday due to a major system-wide technical issue, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and causing widespread travel chaos.
The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) issued ground stops at several major airports, including Chicago, Denver, Newark, Houston, and San Francisco, as the airline’s operations came to an abrupt halt.
Frustrated passengers took to social media to voice their anger and confusion as they faced long delays and cancellations. The airline resolved the technical problem within an hour but warned that residual delays would continue as it worked to restore normal operations.
“The underlying technology issue has been resolved and while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations,” a United Airlines spokesperson told CNN. So far, the disruption has resulted in 827 delayed flights and 23 cancellations.
While the airline confirmed that the issue was not the result of a cyberattack, it did not specify the exact cause of the outage. However, a source informed Reuters that the problem stemmed from a failure in the airline’s weight calculation system, a critical component for flight safety and planning.
