DENVER — Travelers around the country flying United Airlines, including passengers coming into or departing from Denver International Airport, were met with flight delays Wednesday night after what the airline describes as a “technology disruption.”
“I was scheduled on a United flight at 4:28 [PT] and we boarded normally,” said passenger Steve Stewart. “And then shortly before we were both to leave, the captain got on and said there was an IT issue.”
Stewart said he got caught in the United mess while he was traveling back home to Denver from Phoenix.
The airline said the issue has been resolved. When checking the status of flights on United’s website, delays ranged from an hour to over five depending on the flight’s origin and destination.
Stewart said his flight was reaching a delay of two hours before he booked a one-way on Southwest Airlines.
“They started lining up again around six o’clock,” Stewart said. “And then they changed the boards and we got a new departure time. Made an announcement, they started to bring people down in wheelchairs to start boarding. And then, I noticed they brought everyone back. And then they got back on the intercom and said that we have another ground stop.”
Flights out of Denver International Airport, San Francisco International in California, George Bush Intercontinental/Houston in Texas, Chicago O’Hare International in Illinois, Ronald Reagan Washington National in Washington, D.C, and Newark International in New York were impacted, according to the FAA’s National Airspace System Status.
Another passenger reached out to 9NEWS and said they were stuck on their flight from Newark to Denver for nearly three hours, sitting on the tarmac at DIA.
United provided a statement to 9NEWS that reads, “We are working with customers to get them to their destinations after a technology disruption on Wednesday evening. The underlying technology issue has been resolved, and while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations.”
The issue had to do with a system that houses and feeds information about each flight into other systems, including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times.
Grounding alerts from the FAA started lifting on the West Coast around 9 p.m. ET, with the others clearing around 10 p.m. ET. Delays are still expected due to the outage.
The outage began just after 6 p.m. ET and was resolved a few hours later, though delays are expected to continue into the night.
The company replied to users on social media complaining about delays when the delays first began.
“We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused. We are aware of the system error and our teams are working to resolve things to have you on your way,” the company wrote on X.
Stewart said that, though he was inconvenienced, he would remain a United customer.
“I’ll probably see if I can get a refund or a credit for this one segment,” Stewart said. “I’ll give it a try and see what happens and hopefully they’re accommodating.”