The airline is treating the situation as a controllable delay, meaning it has covered customer expenses, such as hotels, when applicable.
United Airlines (UAL) said it is looking to restore normal operations after a system outage grounded over one-third of its entire fleet on Wednesday.
The carrier stated that the outage started at 6:12 p.m. ET and was resolved within a few hours. However, it is expected that residual delays will continue further into the night.
According to FlightAware data, 76 United flights have already been canceled, with 1071, or 35% of its flights, delayed at the time of writing. “We are working with customers to get them to their destinations,” the airline said.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration had earlier notified that the airline had requested ground stops at major airports, including Newark, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, and Houston.
United added that the affected system is called Unimatic, which stores information about every flight and then feeds it to other systems, including those that calculate weight and balance, as well as track flight times. It ruled out any cybersecurity issue behind the outage.
The airline added that it is treating the situation as a controllable delay, meaning it has paid for customer expenses, such as hotels, when applicable. The ground stop did not affect United Express flights or flights already in the air, which will continue toward their respective destinations.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X that he was aware of the incident after being briefed by United CEO Scott Kirby. “The issue was specific to United’s operations and is unrelated to the broader air traffic control system,” Duffy said.
“The team at FAA is in close contact with their systems operations team, and we’ve offered our full support to help them clear up the flight backlog.”
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits about United was in the ‘bearish’ territory at the time of writing.
Last month, a system-wide IT issue caused Alaska Air flights to be grounded for several hours.
United Airlines stock has fallen 8.7% this year.
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.<