United Airlines suffers another massive computer outage
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NEW YORK (AP) - A computer outage at United Airlines delayed thousands of travelers on Thursday and embarrassed the airline at a time when it's trying to win back customers after glitches earlier this year.
The two-hour outage held up 250 of the 5,679 United flights scheduled for Thursday, the airline said.
From Los Angeles to London, Boston to San Francisco, frustrated fliers tweeted snarky remarks about the problem. It was United's third major computer mishap this year.
"Does anyone have a Radio Shack computer or abacus to help United get their system fixed?" tweeted Lewis Franck, a motorsports writer flying from Newark, N.J., to Miami to cover the last race of the NASCAR season.
In a subsequent phone call with The Associated Press, Franck added: "Why is there a total system failure on a beautiful day? What happened to the backup and the backup to backup?"
At Sea-Tac Airport, David Spahr said he had already boarded his 5:56 a.m. flight when the pilot told passengers they would be delayed due to communications problems.
Passengers were eventually taken off the plane and waited in the terminal for flights to resume, Spahr said.
"We have a connection in Chicago that I think will be delayed since it's affecting planes nationwide," he said.
United said the technology problem occurred around 8:30 a.m. EST and was fixed by 10:30 a.m. But morning delays can ripple throughout an airline's network for the rest of the day even after the underlying cause is fixed. That's because once a plane departs late, it can be hard to make up for lost time.
The glitch involved communication between dispatchers at the company's operations center in Chicago and planes at airports around the world, United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said. Dispatchers communicate information such as weight and fuel loads to pilots, who need it to operate the flight. Johnson said the airline has identified the specific problem, and said it won't happen again.
The stock price of United Continental Holdings Inc. fell 47 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $19.51 on a day when shares of other big airlines rose.
United has been struggling with technology problems since March, when it switched to a passenger information computer system that was previously used by Continental. United and Continental merged in 2010. That system, called "Shares," has needed extensive reworking since March to make it easier for workers to use.
In August, 580 United flights were delayed and its website was shut down for two hours because of a problem with a piece of computer hardware.
Johnson said the problems on Thursday were not related to integrating the computer systems of the two airlines.
He said few if any Thursday flights were canceled because of the problem. He said 80 percent of the airline's flights were still on time. By comparison, government statistics show United and Continental each with about 83 percent of flights on time in November 2011.
He said that the problem affected planes that came from United. Planes that came from Continental, and regional flights on United Express, were not affected.
CEO Jeff Smisek acknowledged on Oct. 25 that some customers avoided United over the summer because of its computer problems. He said the airline had fixed those problems by improving software and adding more spare planes to its system, among other moves.
"We expect to earn back those customers that took a detour and we expect to attract new customers as well," he said at the time.
Thursday's problems were exactly what United did not need, said airline and travel industry analyst Henry H. Harteveldt of Atmosphere Research Group. "This event shows an unacceptable lack of planning at United," he said.
"This merger has been an outright disaster on almost every count. United must make some changes in its executive leadership, starting with the CEO" and including its chief information officer if it wants to restore confidence among passengers, he said.
That confidence appeared shaken on Thursday.
Michael Silverstein, who works in finance, was supposed to be on a 6:01 a.m. flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The computer outage had already caused him to miss one meeting. Worried about missing another, he walked off the plane and bought a $195 last-second ticket on a Southwest Airlines flight to Oakland, Calif.
"I'm frustrated because I'm missing a meeting that I thought I had plenty of time for," he said.
The two-hour outage held up 250 of the 5,679 United flights scheduled for Thursday, the airline said.
From Los Angeles to London, Boston to San Francisco, frustrated fliers tweeted snarky remarks about the problem. It was United's third major computer mishap this year.
"Does anyone have a Radio Shack computer or abacus to help United get their system fixed?" tweeted Lewis Franck, a motorsports writer flying from Newark, N.J., to Miami to cover the last race of the NASCAR season.
In a subsequent phone call with The Associated Press, Franck added: "Why is there a total system failure on a beautiful day? What happened to the backup and the backup to backup?"
At Sea-Tac Airport, David Spahr said he had already boarded his 5:56 a.m. flight when the pilot told passengers they would be delayed due to communications problems.
Passengers were eventually taken off the plane and waited in the terminal for flights to resume, Spahr said.
"We have a connection in Chicago that I think will be delayed since it's affecting planes nationwide," he said.
United said the technology problem occurred around 8:30 a.m. EST and was fixed by 10:30 a.m. But morning delays can ripple throughout an airline's network for the rest of the day even after the underlying cause is fixed. That's because once a plane departs late, it can be hard to make up for lost time.
The glitch involved communication between dispatchers at the company's operations center in Chicago and planes at airports around the world, United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said. Dispatchers communicate information such as weight and fuel loads to pilots, who need it to operate the flight. Johnson said the airline has identified the specific problem, and said it won't happen again.
The stock price of United Continental Holdings Inc. fell 47 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $19.51 on a day when shares of other big airlines rose.
United has been struggling with technology problems since March, when it switched to a passenger information computer system that was previously used by Continental. United and Continental merged in 2010. That system, called "Shares," has needed extensive reworking since March to make it easier for workers to use.
In August, 580 United flights were delayed and its website was shut down for two hours because of a problem with a piece of computer hardware.
Johnson said the problems on Thursday were not related to integrating the computer systems of the two airlines.
He said few if any Thursday flights were canceled because of the problem. He said 80 percent of the airline's flights were still on time. By comparison, government statistics show United and Continental each with about 83 percent of flights on time in November 2011.
He said that the problem affected planes that came from United. Planes that came from Continental, and regional flights on United Express, were not affected.
CEO Jeff Smisek acknowledged on Oct. 25 that some customers avoided United over the summer because of its computer problems. He said the airline had fixed those problems by improving software and adding more spare planes to its system, among other moves.
"We expect to earn back those customers that took a detour and we expect to attract new customers as well," he said at the time.
Thursday's problems were exactly what United did not need, said airline and travel industry analyst Henry H. Harteveldt of Atmosphere Research Group. "This event shows an unacceptable lack of planning at United," he said.
"This merger has been an outright disaster on almost every count. United must make some changes in its executive leadership, starting with the CEO" and including its chief information officer if it wants to restore confidence among passengers, he said.
That confidence appeared shaken on Thursday.
Michael Silverstein, who works in finance, was supposed to be on a 6:01 a.m. flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The computer outage had already caused him to miss one meeting. Worried about missing another, he walked off the plane and bought a $195 last-second ticket on a Southwest Airlines flight to Oakland, Calif.
"I'm frustrated because I'm missing a meeting that I thought I had plenty of time for," he said.
12-21-2012
I know someone that works for United now, she used to work for Continental. She said that Continental had a great system. Computers were super simple and easy, everything was streamlined, reservations or changes took only a couple clicks on the computer and it was done. Now, since United took them over, they made them switch back to their old school DOS system because the new one was too expensive, and they did not properly train the half of their employees that didn't know the older system. Result = Headache for not only customers, but for the poor gate agents, front agents, and customer service reps that United can't spare a little bit of cost to train. Back in August I flew from Seattle to Pittsburgh and back a week later. I had a connecting flight from WA DC to PIT, which got canceled. What did United do? Because of their cheap, old system, they canceled all my flights back home (PIT to Houston to SEA), and the poor gate agent didn't know what the heck to do.
I'm sorry I got it wrong....they stuck with Continental instead of using United's easy system...strike what I said, reverse it
I wonder if all of that extensive reworking of the Shares system was outsourced to the lowest bidder?
The Conited merger has been a disaster. I was a loyal Continental customer for almost two decades. I use to love flying with them because the quality of the mileage program, their customer service, condition of aircraft, and fares.
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Now my choices are Conited or the charred remains of Northworst/Delta.
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I wish Alaska flew to A LOT more places.
 @Howard Beale Delta I have actually had great luck with..maybe give them a try again!
 @Howard Beale Virgin America?
In telecommunications, we always have reliable redundancy and full battery back-up. During storms you will notice that you can pick up your landline and 99% of the time you will get dial tone. Cellular also has redundancy and battery back-up and has an over 90% reliability for the major carriers.Â
The only reason for this outage is a badly designed system.
Period.
 @Glassman It is a terribly designed old DOS system that is completely outdated and United won't pay to upgrade.
 @Glassman I don't know the details of this outage, but nothing in the article said it was power related?  Any time you merge two (or three) disparate home-grown systems there are going to be issues; you'd hope they have a test lab or at least be able to model whatever work they are doing. The last (Alaska) major outage was due to simultaneous fiber cuts in two of Sprint's backbone lines.  This is why you have carrier diversity.
 @wsmith_84 You are absolutely correct. I think we both agree this is a badly designed system.
Mission Critical Systems - like the one that is down - should have redundancy and back-ups. Obviously, United doesn't invest in such trivial things.
 @NBA_Is_Useless I'm sure there is redundancy built in all over the place, but the problem with redundant systems is that they work perfectly up until the point where you have a failure mode that wasn't anticipated. Â
It is important not to focus on the situation at hand, but instead how the situation is recovered from and what is done to keep it from happening again.
 @wsmith_84  @NBA_Is_Useless Kind of shot yourself in the foot there, this is the 3rd time this year that they've encountered similar issues.  At what point do we stop giving them excuses?
@wsmith_84 @NBA_Is_Useless 3 failures in 5 months - I'm going to argue their redundancy is limited or very poorly thought out.
ah the good old days when you flew manually with your two feet and your hand on the stick instead of flying by computer controlled airplanes.
 @32jim2 This is a land based computer issue.  It has nothing to do with
the FMCs or other on board computer systems. The aircraft could have flown
their assigned routes easily, but they had no assigned place to go after landing.
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The ground system could not confirm such things as gate assignments, Ground,
personnel, flightline personnel, or baggage personnel assignments, etc.