Flights of United Airlines, one of the largest American carriers, resumed, but the company was still impacted by delays following a technology issue that prompted it to ground planes at major U.S. airports on Wednesday.
The impacted system, called Unimatic, houses flight information that is fed to other systems, including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times, according to United. It’s unclear what caused the problem, which was resolved late Wednesday, although some service disruptions continued into Thursday.
An alert on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website said that all United flights destined for Chicago were halted at their departing airports. Flights to United hubs at Denver, Newark, Houston and San Francisco airports were also affected.
"Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations,” an emailed statement from the Chicago-based airline said.
The system outage, as the company described it, lasted several hours, according to the statement. It wasn’t related to recent concerns about airline industry cybersecurity.
About 35% of all the airline’s flights were delayed and another 6% were canceled Wednesday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.
Johan Kotze was one of the many travelers frustrated by the disruptions. He was at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport to begin a journey to the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius for vacation.
Getting caught up in flight delays for him likely meant he would miss connecting flights along the way and would have to rebook not only the flights but also a car and accommodations.
"It’s not very nice," he said of the experience.
United Airlines apologized on social media and said that in some cases, it would pay for hotel and other expenses incurred by travelers because of the delays.
"Hey there, we apologize for the travel disruption today," the airline told a customer on the social platform X. "Our teams are working to resolve the outage as quickly as possible. I appreciate your patience."
