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 "We are restoring regular flight operations, but some customers
may experience residual delays (Wednesday)," United said in an
afternoon statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration said all flights operated by
United, the fourth largest U.S. passenger carrier, were grounded
starting at about 8 a.m. EDT after the airline experienced a
systemwide computer problem. Some travelers were forced to look for
alternative flights and connections before the order was lifted 9:47
a.m.
United said 800 flights had been delayed, with four flights canceled
on its main carrier and 55 on its regional partners.
"An issue with a (computer) router degraded network connectivity for
various applications, causing this morning's operational
disruption," United said in a statement. "We fixed the router issue,
which is enabling us to restore normal functions."
United said it would rebook flights for affected passengers without
charge.
Diane Menditto, 66, a retired teacher from Hackensack, New Jersey,
on the United Airlines check-in line at Newark Liberty International
Airport said she and her sister-in-law were worried about making a
connecting flight en route to Calgary, Alberta in Canada.
"The only thing I would wonder is, now that we're here and things
are running smoothly, if we'll actually get out on time," Menditto
said.
A separate computer outage affected stock market trading Wednesday
morning. The NYSE Group, which includes the New York Stock Exchange,
suspended trading in all securities due to technical difficulties.
Trading resumed shortly after 3 p.m. EDT.
U.S Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said she had not yet been briefed on the two
major outages. She told reporters: "This is not an oddity. This is
going to continue to happen and we have to begin to deal with it ...
and we have to deal with it legislatively."
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Aviation industry consultant Robert Mann said technical disruptions
have been on the rise since airlines began automating more of their
operations and since they switched from private, proprietary
communications for flight operations to Internet-based
communication, which is cheaper but exposes the carriers to more
risks.
Technical disruptions “are nagging problems, but these are not
problems that are going to draw the huge capital investment
necessary to (approach) 100 percent reliability,” Mann said. “The
revenue loss in these cases is relatively modest.”
United flights were also grounded on June 2 due to "automation
issues."
United Continental Holdings Inc shares fell 3 percent to $52.67.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Additional reporting by
Katie Reilly in New York and Richard Cowan in Washington; Writing by
Jeffrey Benkoe; Editing by Alden Bentley and James Dalgleish)
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