Computer Snafu Snarls United Airlines

Nearly 300 Of Wednesday's Flights Were Cancelled Or Delayed

(AP)  A computer malfunction at United Airlines halted all departures systemwide for two hours Wednesday, forcing the delay or cancellation of nearly 300 flights, the carrier said.

Spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the airline did not know the cause of the problem, which affected the systems United uses to dispatch flights for departure.

The outage lasted from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. CDT, when departures were able to resume after the computer functions returned.

United said about 268 domestic and international flights were delayed for an average of one and a half hours and 24 domestic flights were canceled. No international flights were canceled, Urbanski said.

The airline, a unit of Chicago-based UAL Corp., has about 3,600 flights daily.

"We are very sorry for the inconvenience today's computer outage caused our customers," Urbanski said Wednesday afternoon. "We continue to work hard to resume operations by [Thursday] morning and kindly ask for our customers' patience."

FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer in Seattle confirmed that all United flights across its system had been grounded because of the computer problem.

At O'Hare International Airport, United's inbound and outbound flights were delayed between one and two hours, said spokeswoman Wendy Abrams.

No other airlines were affected.

Jocelyn Ashberg, from Capetown, South Africa, said she flew from Washington D.C. to Chicago Wednesday, only to sit on the tarmac at O'Hare for 1½ hours after the plane landed.

"We rushed to get the plane in Washington because we were late coming in because we were delayed in Johannesburg," Ashberg said. "Then when we got to Chicago, we just had to sit and sit and sit because nobody could tell us how long it was going to be ... we just had to sit like sardines in a can."

Michael McCarron, director of community affairs for the San Francisco International Airport, said about a dozen United flights were affected at the airport Wednesday morning before service resumed.

"Everything is back to normal right now," he said.

United is the airport's largest carrier.

The airline's hubs are O'Hare, Washington Dulles International and airports in Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[duhrer]

Scary thought... the new age cyber-terrorism. Russia, China and several middle-eastern states have been quietly developing advanced hacking and worming techniques to break into computer networks and siable them. In our society today, this can effectively cause harm to people who rely on computers for accuracy and for sustaining life-support systems. No need to fire a single shot.

[sandy19731]

Right now:

The software people are blaming the hardware people and vice versa.

Yikes, geeks are sweating!!

[rikedoid]

Banner ad?
Opera browser.
Hosts file (not just browser specific)
What banner ad?
No glitches here.

vbnvbn,

It's not a popup ad, it's right above the headline where is says 'presented by DELTA'. It won't be stoped by an adblocker.

As for the computer problem, did they try alt-ctl-deltete?


I don't see any ads either, but then I use my hosts file to block all (100%) inpage advertisements plus google popup blocker

as far as ctrl - alt - delete...I really don't think they are using microsoft products, most likely a unix system

[nolalou]

vbnvbn,

It's not a popup ad, it's right above the headline where is says 'presented by DELTA'. It won't be stoped by an adblocker.

As for the computer problem, did they try alt-ctl-deltete?

[mitdgreenb]

Sevenveils...
True -- once upon a time you could do this on a calculator. But inflation... not economic but of wastelines... has made this a lot more difficult.

Everyone lose weight and take up tightrope walking!!

[rikedoid]

What happened? They just upgrade to Vista?

[bogusbones]

I have to laugh - the banner ad on this news story is for Delta.

Rub it in why don't ya?

[bogusbones]

It wasn't Bush - It was Rove.

[hober_mallow]

"Isn't someone going to blame President Bush?"

No, not Bush, but I wonder if any 'off-shored', i.e, Indian, computer professionals were involved.

[derrek22]

If you would like to see which flights were affected by this outage - a good source is www.flightstats.com.

You can look at all the United flights departing ORD during the time frame specified in the above article (8-10 am CDT) and you can look at a specific flight if you have that information.

All you need to do is go to the "Flight Status by Airport" or "Flight Status by Flight" tabs on the Flight Status widget located on the right side of the screen under the Travel Tools section.

Flightstats.com will show all the flights that were delayed, how long they were delayed and will show you the current arrival estimates and gate information if you drill down on the flight link on the results screen.

Very useful site!!

[gabulldog66]

Isn't someone going to blame President Bush?

[tucano2]

Take the Train

[sevenveils]

Back in the day a calculator was the tool for weight and balance. Every pilot know how to calculate it. How did this affect arrivals? Why couldn't departures leave the gate to a holding pen?

This is a case of solid state stupidity w/ no contingency plan. fire the CEO, I'm sure its his fault somehow, just like w/ JetBlue.