A glitch in the computer software that manages United Airlines's automated operations brought the airline's flights to a screeching halt - temporarily - Wednesday morning.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop on all flights under the United banner at 8:26 a.m. Eastern except for regional partner flights, which were allowed to resume operations about 15 minutes after the grounding, according to CNN. The ban was lifted a little before 9:47 a.m.
The problem also forced staff to hand write tickets at multiple airports with United saying that nearly 4,900 flights were affected worldwide.
“An issue with a router degraded network connectivity for various applications, causing this morning's operational disruption," an airline spokesperson said in a statement emailed to SCMagazine.com. "We fixed the router issue, which is enabling us to restore normal functions.”
