United Airlines Abruptly Cancels More Than 370 Flights
On Wednesday, Aug. 6 United Airlines was forced to ground all flights nationwide after suffering a tech issue that led to delays of over 1,000 flights.
"We are working with customers to get them to their destinations after a technology disruption on Wednesday evening," the airline said in a statement. "The underlying technology issue has been resolved, and, while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations."
Why Were United Airlines Flights Delayed, Canceled?
United said the problem related to its Unimatic system that houses information about each flight that is then fed to other systems, including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times.
"Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports," the airline said in a statement. "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."
How Many Flights Were Delayed, Canceled?
On Wednesday, Aug. 6 alone there were 1,093 delays and 218 cancellations, according to data from FlightAware. While the technology glitch has been resolved, United is still struggling with significant delays and cancellations.
As of Thursday, Aug. 7 morning the airline has already canceled another 154 flights with an additional 166 delays at major airports like Newark Liberty International, Denver International and Chicago O'Hare.
United States Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a statement revealing the outages were limited to just United.
"I’ve been briefed by United CEO Scott Kirby on their company’s internal tech outage. The issue was specific to United’s operations, and is unrelated to the broader air traffic control system. The team at @FAANews is in close contact with their systems operations team, and we’ve offered our full support to help them clear up the flight backlog," he said on social media.
Related: Southwest Airlines Announces Change on All Flights Starting August 13