United Airlines computer glitch prompts brief FAA ground stop — second technology halt of 2023

United Airlines flights were briefly placed under a ground stop Tuesday after the airline requested federal authorities to halt the carrier’s departures across the nation due to a “widespread slowdown in United’s technology systems,” the company said.

The advisory came about 10 a.m. Pacific time from the Federal Aviation Administration, which said it was responding to a request from United. The FAA said that United communicated to them that the airline was experiencing “equipment outage.”

The stop was lifted around 10:50 a.m. when the airline told the FAA that they had “identified a fix” for the issue and flights resumed.

“Earlier today a software update caused a widespread slowdown in United’s technology systems,” the airline said in a statement. “We briefly held aircraft at their destination airports and resumed normal operations around 12:45 p.m. (Central time). Our teams are working to get customers to their destinations as soon as possible.”

Flights that were already airborne continued to their destination as planned.

No flights were canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, though about 8% of United scheduled flights — more than 200 flights in all by 10:45 a.m. — had experienced delays.

“We’re working with impacted customers to help them reach their destinations as soon as possible,” the airline said.

Tuesday’s request is the second national ground stop since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

In January, the FAA ordered a ground stop because of a similar computer glitch. Authorities at the time had paused flights for about 90 minutes after FAA personnel caused a database malfunction during a scheduled maintenance window. The ground stop caused roughly 32,000 flights to be delayed within, into or out of U.S. airspace.