The carrier’s different hubs include some of the country’s busiest airports like O’Hare in Chicago, Newark Liberty in New Jersey and San Francisco global.
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The White House also said that there are no signs of malicious intent and spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama has been briefed on both the NYSE and United issues. Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson said that the “malfunctions” at United Airlines and the New York Stock Exchange were “not the result of any nefarious actor”.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered United to ground the flights beginning at 8:26 a.m. EST (GMT1226) and flights did not take off until nearly 10:00 a.m. (GMT1400). “When we came in, we could barely get into the door because the lines were so long”, said Treg Campbell, a United passenger at SFO.
The extent of the problem and whether it affected flights outside the United States was not immediately known.
A big issue, Deull said, “is if they lost an hour of productivity this morning, they can’t structure the day so everyone just works until midnight because of rules on the number of hours of duty time they can have”.
This is the second time in two months United has been forced to ground flights over technical issues.
Specifically, it was an issue with a router, according to a United Airlines Spokesperson. It has suffered several technology lapses in that time, some leading to mass delays and cancellations.
Apparently a systems-wide computer glitch messed up the entire United Airlines computer system, giving flights faulty departure clearance information. The glitch didn’t affect flights that were already in the air.
At Logan worldwide in Boston, flights were kept at their gates and have started to re-board, Massport the airport operator.
United has 691 planes in its fleet. Aiming to ease the passengers’ worries, the captain of one of the United Airlines flights grounded at the Dulles Airport said: “Anyone who wants to look at the cockpit and flight deck is welcome – we have nothing better to do”.
“We don’t know everything behind this morning’s issues yet, but today’s incident underscores the sense that something is very wrong at United”, Gary Leff, co-founder of the frequent-flier website MilePoint, told the Associated Press.
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United Continental Holdings Inc shares fell 3 percent to $52.67.
