Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Computer glitch grounds United flights for the second time in three months

Trevor Mogg
By

it glitch grounds united flights again airlines grounded
Ronnie Chua/Shutterstock.com
For the second time in three months, United Airlines’ flights have been hit by a computer glitch.

The carrier tweeted on Sunday at about 8 p.m. ET that an “IT issue” had forced it to ground all domestic flights.

Recommended Videos

However, a follow-up message posted an hour later announced it’d lifted the ground stop and was “working to get flights on their way.”

It’s not clear when United took the decision to halt its domestic services, though a message tweeted at around 7 p.m. by a passenger on a delayed United plane indicated the problem lasted at least a couple of hours.

The airline is yet to elaborate on what caused the glitch.

The incident will come as an embarrassment to United as it’s the second time for it to happen in three months. In October, a number of its flights were delayed for several hours when a computer issue affected its weight reporting system.

And no, such troublesome technical issues aren’t the preserve of United. In the summer of 2016, Delta was forced to cancel flights following a global computer system outage at its hub in Atlanta, Georgia, while American had to delay a number of flights in 2015 when some pilots’ iPads – used to store important flight documents – started malfunctioning.

We’ve reached out to United Airlines for more information on this current issue and will update when we hear back.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Most people distrust AI and want regulation, says new survey
A person's hand holding a smartphone. The smartphone is showing the website for the ChatGPT generative AI.

Most American adults do not trust artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and worry about their potential misuse, a new survey has found. It suggests that the frequent scandals surrounding AI-created malware and disinformation are taking their toll and that the public might be increasingly receptive to ideas of AI regulation.

The survey from the MITRE Corporation and the Harris Poll claims that just 39% of 2,063 U.S. adults polled believe that today’s AI tech is “safe and secure,” a drop of 9% from when the two firms conducted their last survey in November 2022.

Read more
How to join the Windows Insider program
The Dell XPS 13 on a table with the Start Menu open.

The Windows Insider program is Microsoft's early-release testing platform for new Windows builds and features. It's the only place to get access to the Microsoft Copilot at this time, so if you're keen to play around with the smartest version of Clippy to date, then you'll need to sign up, and join the Dev channel. For anyone interested in other upcoming features (or more stable builds) there are other channels to consider, too.

Whichever one you want to sign up to, though, joining is pretty straightforward. Here's how to do it.

Read more
How to increase your internet speed
Man working at a desk at home.

There is nothing more frustrating than your internet moving along at a snail’s pace. Web pages take forever to load, and games and streaming services experience lag. With Zoom meetings becoming a more regular occurrence, any significant slowdown in your internet makes working at home much more difficult, too.

Read more