United Recovers From Computer Outage That Brought Flights To A Standstill
by Daniel McCarthy /United Airlines is recovering from an “IT issue” that crashed the airline’s computer systems on Sunday night.
While the issue didn’t affect flights in the air or international departures, it did force United to issue a ground stop at around 6:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, leaving thousands of passengers to deal with flight delays and cancellations.
“A ground stop is in place for domestic flights due to an IT issue. We’re working on a resolution. We apologize for the inconvenience,” United said in a statement at 8:00 p.m. EST on Sunday.
United resumed service at 9:00 p.m. EST, though flights were still delayed into Monday morning. According to FlightAware, more than 200 departures were impacted.
United is allowing travel agents to make voluntary changes on tickets for travel on January 23 on flights that have been canceled or delayed more than two hours, and waiving the change fee or any difference in fare for new flights departing on or before January 25, as long as travel is scheduled in the same cabin and between the same cities as originally ticketed.
Sunday’s issue was yet another in a string of airline problems caused by website crashes or computer system failures over the past year.
July, Southwest Airline was forced to cancel almost 700 flights after a computer issue brought down its website and check-in systems. Then last month, its website crashed during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
In September, a computer in British Airways’ system knocked out check-in kiosks at several major airports.
And, in August, Delta Air Lines lost power to its core data center, setting off a chain of events that grounded flights worldwide for three days.
