Travel chaos as United Airlines grounds entire mainline fleet over ‘technology issue’

UNITED Airlines bosses were forced to ground its fleet of planes across the US on Wednesday sparking travel chaos for passengers. 

Ground stops were ordered at major airports including Houston, Newark, and San Francisco. 

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United, which has a fleet of around 1,000 planes, started to encounter issues just before 6:15pm ET.

More than 1,000 United flights were delayed worldwide, according to FlightAware.

The issue was eventually resolved, but chiefs warned travelers to expect delays.

“Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports,” a spokesperson told Fox Business.

“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.”

Travelers told CNN their experiences at airports had been “pretty rough.”

Jessica Jeffers, who was on a flight heading from Denver to Newark, was stuck on her aircraft for two hours waiting for answers.

She claimed passengers were given an ultimatum of disembarking the plane or wait on board.

“The air condition has been running really low so we have essentially been baking in here for hours,” she told CNN.

Between 50 and 60 planes were left sitting on the tarmac at Denver, travelers claimed on X.

Some passengers were left waiting on board planes for three hours, according to the CW affiliate WGN-TV.

Travelers took to social media to complain about the travel chaos.

“I just spent 3 hours in Newark with my flight delayed and just arrived in Charlotte,” Robert Hillman posted on X.

“And after 2 hour, you all can’t find anyone in the Charlotte airport to let us off your plane.”

Hillman claimed passengers were not being told when they could expect to disembark the aircraft.

Footage obtained by the NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV showed scores of travelers sitting by their gates at Chicago O’Hare airport.

Passengers were seen scrolling their cell phones when they should’ve been boarding planes. Some flights were canceled.

United bosses offered customers $200 after they were put up in hotels.

The technology issue also caused airport taxiing and disembarking systems to go down.

Travelers told WGN that some planes had to be pulled manually to the gates.

A cyber scare wasn’t behind the outage, according to United.

And, flights already airborne were not forced to divert.

United has offered waivers to passengers traveling to or from airports including Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington Dulles, Los Angeles, Houston and Newark.

Passengers who booked their tickets by August 5 and are traveling between August 7-10 can reschedule their flights without being hit with extra costs.

But, they must fly by August 16.

United planes were grounded just weeks after an IT issue impacted Alaska Airlines jets.

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