United Airlines halted its mainline flights out of departure airports Wednesday night due to a “technology issue,” the airline told CNN.
“Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports,” an airline spokesperson said in a statement. “We expect additional flight delays this evening as we work through this issue. Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations.”
About 16% of the carrier’s flights were delayed and a handful had been canceled as of 8:30 p.m. ET, according to flight data tracker FlightAware.
Passenger Angela Jeffers, whose flight from Nashville to Denver was delayed two hours on Wednesday, said the pilot told passengers about the system outage.
“We’re missing some numbers we need to take off so we can’t take off yet and don’t have a time estimate of when we’ll be able to,” Jeffers recalled the pilot telling passengers.
She told CNN that passengers were allowed to get off the plane, but weren’t given further information on refunds or if they’d be taking off.
Airports in Chicago, Denver, Newark, Houston and San Francisco have been impacted, according to the Federal Aviation Administration system status.
CNN’s Jillian Sykes contributed to this report.
