United’s tech travails
United Airlines, which has been in the news lately for several in-flight incidents related to possible equipment failure, suffered a near total outage of its passenger reservation system on Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com and USA Today.
The outage blacked out everything online for about two hours in the middle of the afternoon, starting about 3 PM. The system finally came back online at about 5:20 PM, EST.
The technological nightmare also stopped the passenger boarding process. The FAA called a "ground stop" for all United flights destined for Houston, Newark and San Francisco. This means that all flights are held at their point of origin until the situation (in this case the tech black out) improves at destination airports. USA Today says the FAA called the cause a "UAL COMPUTER ISSUE."
FlightAware and USA Today pointed to United "SHARES" online reservation system as a key component of the tech failure today. Both sources say thay that the system was subject to "significant" glitches in March when United merged with Continental and United adopted the "SHARES’ system from Continental.
Numerous critics and experts have pointed to the merger as the source of systems and equipment malfunctions that have plagued the airline since the beginning of the year.
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