Updated August 6, 2025 at 8:37 PM MDT
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of United Airlines flights were disrupted on Wednesday evening as the carrier grappled with a major computer system outage.
"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 in a statement.
The "technology disruption" forced United to hold hundreds of flights at their departure airports for several hours.
At the carrier's request, the Federal Aviation Administration issued ground stops for all of its United flights at the airline's major hubs including Chicago, Houston, Denver, Newark, N.J. and San Francisco. That did not include flights on the company's smaller regional jets.
United passengers turned quickly to social media, complaining that they were stuck on planes that were paralyzed at the gate or on the tarmac. Other travelers arrived at their destinations, only to find immobilized planes blocking their arrival gates.
Some jets that were preparing for takeoff and had been waiting for the problems to resolve eventually returned to their gates for passengers to deplane. United flights that were already in the air were not affected by the technology issue.
The outage began shortly after 6 p.m. ET and was resolved within a few hours, the airline said, although it warned that residual delays would continue into Wednesday night.
The incident was not related to recent concerns about cybersecurity in the airline industry, United said. The impacted computer system housed information about each flight and fed it to other computer systems, according to United, including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times.
United is just the latest major carrier to suffer a systemwide computer meltdown.
In 2022, Southwest Airlines fell apart during the busy Christmas holiday travel period. A major winter storm caused travel disruptions across the U.S., forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights. While most recovered relatively quickly, Southwest did not. The airline ultimately canceled 16,900 flights, stranding more than 2 million passengers.
Last summer, it was Delta Air Lines that cancelled thousands of flights after a major system outage triggered by a faulty software update.
Copyright 2025 NPR
