Recently United Airlines went through a major system outage that stalled operations for several hours, causing cascading flight delays and cancellations across most major U.S. airports. The Chicago-based airline said in a filing late Wednesday. As a result, it led to system-wide delays and cancellations, especially crippling its hubs in Denver, Newark, Houston and San Francisco.
It’s easy to see how, by Thursday morning, United Airlines found itself in a real bind. An average of 4% of its scheduled flights were delayed and nearly 4% of all flights were canceled. Wednesday was a ridiculous few hours for United Airlines. About 35 percent of all flights were delayed and about 7 percent were canceled due to a technology meltdown.
Details of the Outage
The airline’s travel alert page advised that the technology disruption may affect flights across the U.S. It can do the same to international flights to a dozen or more overseas cities. In addition, major airports including those in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Orlando, Chicago, Honolulu and Guam saw ripple effects from the outage. European continent airports such as London, Frankfurt, and Munich were mentioned as well.
To counter customers’ fear, United ended up sending communication that safety was their number one priority even then. They communicated actively through social media channels, stating, “Hey there, we apologize for the travel disruption today.” At no time did they suggest that their teams were anything other than entirely focused on restoring the outage in the shortest time possible.
“Our teams are working to resolve the outage as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.” – United Airlines
Support from Authorities
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called biggest disruption in air traffic on Friday made available an assistance. A spokesperson noted, “We’ve offered full support to help address their flight backlog and remain in close contact with United.” This agreement, once executed, will help expedite the process of getting returning operations back to normalcy for impacted passengers.
As of Thursday morning, United Airlines reported that they had restored service following a late-Wednesday resolution to the outage. They cautioned customers to expect residual delays all weekend long. Our travel alert page featured this possibility for ongoing disruptions from Thursday into Sunday.
Customer Assistance Efforts
In an additional statement, United Airlines again pledged to continue supporting customers through the pandemic. They assured travelers that they would work closely with them to ensure they reach their destinations despite the backlog created by the outage.
