United Airlines System Back Up and Running After Outage

Originally published on AeroNewsX

United Airlines flight operations are back up and running following a system outage that hit the airline early on Friday morning. For just under an hour, the Chicago-based airline coordinated a ground stop with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the airline worked on fixing the issues.

At around 07:00 Eastern in the morning, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for all United Airlines flights. This also included flight and ground operations under United’s regional brand, at the airline’s request. However, United Airlines had managed to recover and restore most of its flight operations by around 8:00 am Eastern. 

Throughout the United system, the impact seems to be relatively limited. FlightAware’s delay and cancellations tracker shows that only a few flights were cancelled that day, while only around 2% of flights were delayed. There may be some lingering impacts throughout the weekend and passengers are encouraged to check with United regarding the status of their flight. 

Usually, the best response to a system outage is to temporarily pause operations and work to resolve the problem. Sometimes, planes cannot depart when there is a system issue because important flight planning and operations elements rely on information supplied by computer software. 

Technical issues and system outages do occur in the airline industry. The causes behind them vary, and they can have short-term and long-term impacts. The airline industry is heavily reliant on computers and IT systems when it comes to daily operations. These systems help keep flights departing, bags moving, and ticket counters operational.

In the past few years, almost every airline in the United States has experienced a system outage in some way or another. Some system outages can just last for an hour, such as the one United faced, while others have taken longer to recover from. 

Ultimately these outages can also be expensive. In August 2016, Delta faced a system outage that led to around 2,300 cancelled flights over a three-day period. According to Delta, the outage and the recovery cost the airline around USD$100 million.