Airline workers had to write tickets by hand for passengers at some airports, however, according to the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa global Airport spokeswoman Emily Nipps said that if a flight was already in the air when the issue occurred it was allowed to continue on to its destination. “We will have a waiver available at united.com for customers who are able to change their flight plans”.
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President Barack Obama along with White House and U.S. treasury officials were briefed about the stoppage and were monitoring the situation, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. Instead, it was caused by a degraded network connectivity, resulting in problems with the airline’s ability to send information to planes on the ground.
Three flights scheduled to depart the airport at 6:45 a.m. and headed to Chicago, Newark, New Jersey and Phoenix were delayed until 10:30 a.m. because of the error. “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 airliner had a temporary halt June 2 due to computer animation issues.
The outage Wednesday is the second time in two months that United had to ground flights because of a technical issue.
While United was dealing with grounded flights, the New York Stock Exchange also shut down stock trading due to a technical issue.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said there were no signs that the problems at NYSE and United Airlines stemmed from “malicious activity”.
Justin Rusthoven, 16, waited with his fellow Austin-area Boy Scouts for their delayed flight home, a small canoe paddle sticking out of his backpack. High-paying business travelers were outraged; United CEO Jeff Smisek apologized for failing to provide good customer service.
United has suffered several similar reservation system snafus since its merger with Continental in 2010.
No arriving flights into Palm Springs were affected.
A computer glitch is being blamed for disrupting United Airlines flights around the country.
By afternoon, planes and people were moving again, and the airline spent most of the day playing catchup with its schedule.
Many passengers, who were stranded at airports, have expressed frustration regarding the delay.
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United Continental Holdings Inc shares fell 3 percent to $52.67.
