All United Airlines Flights Grounded Due to Nationwide Outage

Just months after various system outages struck the Southwest Airlines network, another similar issue has transpired. This time, however, it has affected United Airlines.

What Happened?

Earlier on Tuesday, September 5th, United Airlines briefly grounded its entire fleet nationwide, as confirmed by the airline and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

In a statement to CNBC, the carrier noted it was, "...experiencing a systemwide technology issue and [was] holding all aircraft at their departure airports."

The airline has not specified what issue it experienced precisely. However, the issue was related to United's IT department and has continued to be described as a "computer issue".

The FAA posted on its website that United requested a nationwide ground stop after its aircraft could not contact flight dispatchers using "normal means". This ground stop affected both United mainline flights in addition to flights operated by its regional subsidiaries.

United later added that any flights that were already airborne were not affected. These flights continued to their destination as planned.

However, at the time of the outage, around seven flights had been canceled while 85 were delayed.

The departure board for Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), a major United hub, showed that all United flights departing between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m. ET were delayed. Furthermore, a handful of flights later in the day had also received delays.

These delays were all between 45 minutes to just over an hour.

The ground stop was only in effect for about half an hour. As of 1:50 pm Eastern Standard Time, United made an announcement saying that a fix had been identified for the outage and flights had resumed.

We've Seen This Before.

A few months ago, in April of 2023, a similar technology outage hit Southwest Airlines. This caused around 1,800 flights (about 43% of its schedule) to be delayed.

However, this issue prompted Southwest to cancel only 11 flights, about 1% of its schedule that day.

This IT issue was resolved in quick succession and Southwest flights began operating shortly after.

Unfortunately, such IT issues are not uncommon in today's airline industry.

Back in May, British Airways canceled over 90 flights from London Heathrow after suffering an IT meltdown. This wasn't the first time such an issue affected BA as the airline has experienced similar computer-related disruptions time and time again throughout its history.

It was in 2017 when British Airways was hit with a massive computer system failure due to power supply issues, causing over 75,000 passengers to be affected.

Will Passengers be Compensated?

Due to the quick nature in which the issue was resolved, it's unlikely that United will provide compensation such as flight credits for all passengers affected.

After all, most flights departed with a maximum delay of one hour with a small minority being canceled.

However, passengers onboard the flights that were canceled should receive accommodations in addition to getting rebooked. This is because the issue was related to the airline's operation and therefore, United is required to sort any accommodations for these affected passengers.

If any passengers happened to be connecting and missed their connecting flight, United will rebook them on the next available flight as its schedule permits.