United Airlines passengers faced the prospect of delays Wednesday evening after the carrier requested a nationwide ground stop because of an IT glitch.
The ground stop was requested around 6:15 p.m. EST and lasted about two hours. United issued a statement just after 10 p.m. EST saying that the issue had been resolved.
United was treating the issue as a controllable delay, meaning it would would cover certain delay-related expenses for travelers. The "technology issue" affected a system that feeds information on flight times and weight and balance into the company's other flight programs.
"We are working with customers to get them to their destinations after a technology disruption on Wednesday evening. The underlying technology issue has been resolved, and, while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations," the airline said.
As of 10:30 p.m. EST, flight-tracking service FlightAware showed that a third of United’s mainline flights were running behind schedule, though that figure included flights from before the ground stop went into effect. Still, the number of both delays and cancellations for United ticked up following the ground stop.
More were possible as United worked to get crews and planes back on schedule, but the lifting of the ground stop suggested the worst was over.
A "ground stop" holds flights on the ground so that arrivals don’t back up at an airport experiencing an issue like poor weather or another event that restricts arriving flights. In some cases, an airline will request a ground stop if it’s experiencing an operational issue, which appears to have been the case for United this evening.
