United Airlines Resumes Operations After System Outage

‍CHICAGO — United Airlines (UA) reported that the technical problem that caused its flights to be grounded for a few hours on August 6 at major U.S. airports, such as Chicago, Denver, and Houston, had been fixed.

At 10 p.m. ET, UA informed USA TODAY that the "underlying technology issue" had been fixed and that it was in the process of getting back to business as usual. 

An issue with United Airlines’ (UA) system that calculates aircraft weight and balance and tracks flight times caused flights to be grounded nationwide on Wednesday night. The airline confirmed that the issue is not related to a cyberattack.

The issue took place at 6 p.m. Eastern time and was resolved within a few hours; however, over 1,000 flights were delayed and 40 were cancelled as a result.

“Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports. 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," said UA’s statement. 

The airline is covering meals and hotel accommodations for impacted customers and is working on getting each passenger to their destination.

The issue did not affect United Express flights and flights that were already airborne at the time the technical outage occurred. 

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was aware of the airline's operational disruptions and assured that the technical issue was not related to the broader air traffic control system. However, it did say that delays may continue as the airline works through the recovery process.

The incident follows other prominent US airline IT failures in the past year, such as Alaska Airlines’ (AS) April 2025 system outage and the 2022 Southwest Airlines (WN) winter holiday meltdown.