United Airlines blamed a “technology disruption” for widespread flight delays Wednesday.
“We are working with customers to get them to their destinations after a technology disruption on Wednesday evening,” United said in a statement to The Hill. “The underlying technology issue has been resolved, and, while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations.”
According to The Associated Press, the airline grounded more than 1,000 flights. The flight-tracking website FlightAware showed 1,092 delays for the airline company.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post online that he was briefed on the issues. The Trump administration has made updating technology and boosting recruitment for air traffic control a priority.
“I’ve been briefed by United CEO Scott Kirby on their company’s internal tech outage,” Duffy wrote late Wednesday in a post on the social platform X. “The issue was specific to United’s operations, and is unrelated to the broader air traffic control system.”
“The team at @FAANews is in close contact with their systems operations team, and we’ve offered our full support to help them clear up the flight backlog,” he added.
United said the disruption “impacted” a system “which houses information about each flight that is then fed to other systems including – for example – those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times” called Unimatic.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network, that it was “aware United experienced a technology issue disrupting their operations.”
“Some delays may continue as they work through the recovery process,” the FAA added. “We’ve offered full support to help address their flight backlog and remain in close contact with United.”
