United Airlines grounds flights, citing computer problems

United said that passengers who are able to voluntarily change their travel plans because of the grounding will not be charged the normal fees imposed on such changes.

Right now travelers can expect big delays due to this problem, as New York, Washington, D.C., Albuquerque, New Mexico and Connecticut fliers are already complaining about long lines and wait times.

The move did not create flight scheduling chaos like it did at some other airports.

All US United flights were grounded shortly before 9 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time due to computer issues.

“Automation” issues were responsible, the FAA said; per the tech site The Verge, that’s “another way of saying that United is having trouble with the back-end software and hardware that it uses to coordinate flights at the several hundred airports it serves”.

“We’re being told the United systems issue is affecting all flights, nobody is going anywhere”, wrote William Allison, who was briefly stranded at San Francisco worldwide Airport.

United went through a similar incident June 2 when the second largest airline in the world cited the lack of proper dispatch information forcing it to halt its takeoffs in the US for less than 60 minutes.

It is the second time in two months that the Chicago carrier has been hit by major technical issues. The flight arriving from Houston, which is just a short trip was delayed more than 2 hours.

United Airlines dropped 1.4% on Wednesday morning following the glitch but the broader market always down as well.

Details of the computer problem were not immediately available.

The airline also had a series of computer-related mass delays and cancellations following its merger with Continental in 2012.

The USA Department of Homeland Security said there were no signs that the problems at NYSE and United Airlines stemmed from “malicious activity”. Nationwide, according to NBC News, 3,500 flights were affected. As many as 235 USA destinations and 138 global destinations could experience delays resulting from the unexpected ground stop.

“An issue with a router degraded network connectivity for various applications, causing this morning’s operational disruption”, United said in a statement to U.S. TODAY.