All United Airlines Domestic Flights Grounded by Computer Outage

All United Airlines Domestic Flights Grounded by Computer Outage

All of United Airlines' domestic flights were grounded Sunday night because of a computer outage, the Federal Aviation Administration said as scores of angry travelers sounded off on social media.

International flights weren't affected by the ground stop, which the FAA said was issued at United's request.

The ground stop initially was scheduled to end at 8 p.m., but United tweeted at 8:06 that it was still "working on a resolution." The FAA later extended the ground stop to 9 p.m. ET.

Always makes me nervous when I see a system failure of this magnitude. Hopefully it's something that isn't sinister.

a reply to: loam

First fingers will point to Russian hackers for sure. You'll see.

It took it 17 years, but y2k is finally here!!!



Seriously this seems to be happening quite often these days, perhaps the systems airline use are obsolete?

maybe they need a back up system, how did they manage before computers? maybe that could be their backup system.

a reply to: loam

didn't this just happen like last year?

"glitch" in the system.

I see 4 computer glitches last year grounding flights. Each event was a separate airline..

Maybe external forces, atmospheric/Sun possibly. I had an audio doppler like signal go through my PC yesterday, (22nd) similar to the old dial up sound, but waxed and waned.

originally posted by: Tardacus
maybe they need a back up system, how did they manage before computers? maybe that could be their backup system.

Think about all the regulations and minimum standards that must have been put in place since the computer era. Having a non-computerized back up would be like a trucker using a covered wagon as a back-up if their truck broke down.

originally posted by: Indigent
It took it 17 years, but y2k is finally here!!!



Seriously this seems to be happening quite often these days, perhaps the systems airline use are obsolete?

There are so many systems at an airline it's hard to guess what the problem is unless we get more specifics. If they're grounding flights, it must be the departure control, weight and balance or flight ops system. Will be interesting to see if we ever get a real description of what went wrong.

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

I blame Trump!!



It could have been a million different things. I wonder if they even know at this time what caused it.

UPDATE:



So no explanation.

a reply to: loam

It happens to everyone.
SW Airlines july 20th 2016.
www.cbsnews.com...

a reply to: Indigent

Getting the airlines to pay for just about anything is like getting blood from a rock. When they were responsible for the checkpoints we couldn't even get them to pay $3000 a unit for extended warranties on some of the equipment, or to pay to cover repairs when they had to be returned to the factory for maintenance.

Skynet is here. Secretly. US military will destroy the world with robot army. Beware.

People just expect IT stuff to work and never do some sort of testing to see if the fallback will actually work as they can't afford the risk as it may affect systems and when it does fail guess what you're stuffed till someone can get in and fix it manually.

The most common clanger is the UPS system which due to good power supply has not been needed in 15 years and is still on its original set of batteries which now can hold as much charge as a button battery and thus when a power blip does occur things go down fast and in unusual states which can make booting them back up later a pain.

Theres test buttons on UPS systems but its a Schrodinger's cat situation when you press the button as if the UPS fails you get systems dropping like flies or if its ok then you carry on as normal, quite a lot of management won't test as they don't want to know the answer.

I'm thinking an EMP from Planet X as it has been responsible for Many similar outages, blackouts and the many plane crashes.

As proximity is gained, incidents like this increase. pay attention to these events and bear this in mind in future.

We have enormous (until
More recently unprecedented) Eddy formations appearing in our magnetosphere, these particles regularly ground to the earth, causing a range of issues..

Space weather anyone?

a reply to: EndOfDays77

So now, not only does your magic EMP selectively attack aircraft, completely ignoring other aircraft flying right next to the one that crashed, according to you, but now it's randomly hitting specific computer systems and nothing else.

a reply to: Zaphod58

When the airline passes on that platinum level extended EMP security upgrade, this is what happens.

I bet you anything it's a money issue,

IT things, especially ones like systems for airlines, have to be insanely complication, I'm talking multiple databases all talking to one another, and these also talk to the ticket sales software and ALL OF THIS needs to be BACKED UP and UPDATED always.

It just takes even a missing closing ) or something as bad as not updating correctly or in a proper order. IT systems today DO NOT RUN themselves, as you'd like to think, the planes might have auto pilot, but the systems to talk to and assist that autopilot do not, funny enough.

Sooner or later the guys and gals who get that puppy running like a greyhound racing dog, eventually get better skills and offered better paying jobs, and the airline needs to hire a replacement, most times it's not the right skilled one, it's a lesser skilled less paid replacement. Who maybe isn't as attentive as their predecessor and these issues happen, because that new guy either got complacent or just made a boo boo.

It happens more than you'd think, money plays a huge role in companies downfalls all the time, just not in the ways many would think could ruin a company, until it happens.