United delays all flights nationwide following ground stop due to ‘equipment outage’
By Pete Muntean and Ramishah Maruf, CNN
(CNN) — United Airlines delayed more than 300 flights after the FAA lifted a brief ground stop that continued to disrupt the carrier’s service nationwide.
On Tuesday afternoon, United Airlines delayed all flights nationwide due to an “equipment outage,” according to an alert from the Federal Aviation Administration.
In an update about an hour later, the FAA alert said the “ground stop is cancelled.”
“We have identified a fix for the technology issue and flights have resumed. We’re working with impacted customers to help them reach their destinations as soon as possible,” United Airlines posted on social media.
There continued to be 330 delayed flights as of 3 pm EST, which is 12% of its operations, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. But the tracking site FlightAware shows only 14 United flights were canceled on Tuesday.
CNN has reached out to United about the residual delays.
Tuesday’s ground stop adds to the list of headaches travelers had to deal with this summer. Hurricane Idalia and severe storms in early August disrupted air travel for thousands of passengers just in the last month.
Much of the summer’s travel chaos affected United Airlines’ customers. Late June, hundreds of cancellations and thousands of delays piled up at United. Based on United’s typical passenger volumes from previous earnings reports and the number of canceled flights, there were likely more than 400,000 passengers booked on canceled United flights, CNN reported.
Along with bad weather, United CEO Scott Kirby had blamed much of the service meltdown on the FAA and staffing shortages in air traffic control centers.
But Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who oversees the FAA, said to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “air traffic control issues are not the number one issue causing cancellations and delays. They’re not even the number two issue.”
Kirby apologized to customers and his own employees after taking a private jet during the week of mass delays and cancellations.
The-CNN-Wire
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