DENVER (KDVR) – Commercial airline United Airlines ordered ground stops for flights at several major airports Wednesday evening.
According to a ground stop alert posted by the Federal Aviation Administration, carriers were asking for ground stops to be issued due to technical issues.
The airline said the affected systems are called “Unimatic” and house information about each flight that is being fed to the other systems. Information shared includes information that calculates weight, balance, and truck flight times.
The airline said it is treating the issue as “controllable delays.” This means that the airline has paid customer fees such as hotels and meals, if applicable.
The airline also shared that the suspension began at 5:12pm MDT and was resolved within hours.
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy, who was briefed in a post by United CEO Scott Kirby, said he learned that the issue is “specialized in United’s business and has nothing to do with the broader air traffic control system.”
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The airline provided the next update around 8:15pm.
“We’re working with our customers to take us to our destination after tech disruptions on Wednesday evening. The underlying technology issues have been resolved and we expect the remaining delays, but our team is working to recover from normal operations.”
United Airlines spokesman
An airline spokesman told Nexstar’s KDVR in a statement in the evening that United had taken root on a mainline flight (a larger plane that operates under the name of the main carrier). The statement went on and although the delay was expected to increase in the evening, United vowed to work to keep customers safe and “take them to their destination.”
In a statement, the FAA said it “provided full support in dealing with the flight backlog.”
The affected air traffic control facilities included Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Chicago, Washington, DC, Denver and other US facilities, but also affected facilities in Canada.
In San Francisco, ground stops have been lifted and flights have resumed as of 6:20pm PDT, an SFO spokesperson told Nexstar’s Kron.
However, by 7pm at Denver International Airport there were 412 delays and 10 cancelled flights. Of these delays, 176 were attributed to United Airlines.
United said the suspension has nothing to do with aviation industry’s cybersecurity concerns.
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