United Airlines grounds flights at some airports: 'Working to restore operations'

NEWARK, N.J. (PIX11) -- A system outage caused multiple United Airlines flights to be grounded on Wednesday afternoon, affecting departures at various airports, according to a spokesperson for the airline.

The outage was first reported at 5:12 p.m. Central Time.

The airline stated that an internal program, Unimatic, which stores information about each flight, was affected.

"Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports. We expect additional flight delays this evening as we work through this issue. Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations."

United Media Relations team

The issue was resolved within a few hours, although residual delays continued into Wednesday night, the airline said. The airline stated it is working to restore normal operations.

The outage was not related to cybersecurity, United said.

Airports affected

Flights from Newark International Airport were among the local airports experiencing disruptions, according to a social media post on the airport's X account.

Other affected airports include George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, and San Francisco International Airport, according to the website FlightAware.

FAA response

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was fully supporting efforts to help address United's flight backlog and remains in close contact with the airline.

"Some delays may continue as [United] works through the recovery process," the FAA stated.

United Airlines treated the flights affected as a controllable delay. The airline said it covered customer expenses, such as hotels, where applicable, a spokesperson told PIX11 News.