United Airlines resumes flights grounded by computer glitch

“An issue with a router degraded network connectivity for various applications, causing this morning’s operational disruption”, an airline spokesperson said in a statement emailed to SCMagazine.com.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a ground-stop order after almost two hours, allowing United planes to fly again.

United said it resolved the problems, and had updates on its website about the flight delays and any other issues linked to the passenger flight plans. United said it will cancel some domestic flights “help with the recovery process”, and will try to operate as many of its global flights as possible.

A computer glitch in United Airlines’ system that triggered this massive domino effect that forced every single plane for the company in the country to be grounded. The airliner had a temporary halt June 2 due to computer animation issues. “Two United pilots said the ground stop was prompted because United’s computer system couldn’t provide verified passenger lists that are required before FAA could authorize takeoffs”, the report continued. The company has struggled with similar technical issues since its merger with Continental Airlines and adoption of the former’s computer system. Only 66.5% of United Airlines flights were on time during the month.

President Barack Obama along with White House and United States treasury officials were briefed about the stoppage and were monitoring the situation, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. Given that United is one of the world’s largest airlines, the travel delays could be significant.

A separate computer outage affected stock market trading Wednesday morning.

Adler, 41, said he soon discovered that the airline was having technical problems – flight attendants were writing luggage tags by hand and converting pre-printed boarding passes into scribbled pieces of paper.

The airline said that it experienced some delays Thursday, but that they were “mostly” due to weather.

United Continental Holdings Inc shares fell 3 percent to $52.67.