United Airlines flights grounded worldwide for 2 hours

Early on Wednesday morning in the US, United Airlines was forced to ground all flights worldwide for approximately two hours as a result of a computer problem. “An issue with a router degraded network connectivity for various applications, causing this morning’s operational disruption. We fixed the router issue, which is enabling us to restore normal functions,” a United spokesperson said. The disruption is believed to have affected over 3,500 flights across the globe, as well as 235 domestic and 138 international destinations. Already aviation experts have commented that the day’s events may prove costly for United Airlines which has worked hard to solve the majority of problems related to merging with Continental Airlines.
The grounding was lifted first for United’s regional carriers, which were able to carry out their own weight and balance checks. However passengers at airports from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Washington, D.C., to Florida were complaining about backups and lengthy lines, while a number of gate agents at a few airports were forced to issue hand-written tickets. News from NBC Connecticut said United passengers who did not have a hard copy of their boarding pass were not allowed to check in at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, north of Hartford, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey indicated it was trying to help passengers whose flights were disrupted at the city’s three major airports. “Our airports are assessing/monitoring the impacts of this problem and are working with United to accommodate flights in other terminals and assist passengers to the extent possible,” it said. This is not the only problem the airline has recently encountered after citing back on 2nd June that “automation issues” were responsible for the grounding of as number of flights.