United Airlines has good news for mid-air travelers after it issued a nationwide ground stop and began holding all departures due to a technology issue. It has now been revealed that this does not affect United Express (regional) flights, and any flight that is in the air already will continue to its destination.
United Airlines grounds flights
United Airlines announced that it was grounding its flights at US airports on Wednesday, August 6, due to a "technology issue," according to a statement from the company. It also warned of additional flight delays in the evening.
“Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports,” the airline said.
{{/usCountry}}“Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports,” the airline said.
{{/usCountry}}Read More | United Airlines ground stop: Which airports are affected by system outage?
An insider familiar with the situation told Reuters that United suffered an outage of its weight calculation system. As of 9:15 pm EST, flight tracking data from FlightAware showed that on Wednesday, 824, or 27%, of United flights had been delayed.
"We expect additional flight delays this evening as we work through this issue," United's statement said. "Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations."
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Meanwhile, flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said on social media at 9:19 p.m. ET (0119 GMT on Thursday, August), “The issue affecting United Airlines flights has been resolved and mainline flights are departing once again.”
The ground stops had been issued at major United hub airports including Newark, Denver, Houston, and Chicago. This outage came just a few weeks after Alaska Airlines grounded all of its flights for about three hours after an IT outage for the second time in just more than a year. Alaska had grounded its entire fleet in April last year because of a problem with the system that calculates the weight and balance of its planes.