United Airlines was forced to ground flights nationwide on Wednesday night due to a technology outage, according to US media reports. While the issue was resolved to ensure flights were cleared for take-off, as many as 1,000 flights were delayed and dozens were cancelled as a consequence of the outage.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a federal agency that regulates and oversees the civil aviation sector, the airline "experienced a technology issue disrupting their operations."
The issue affecting United Airlines flights has been resolved and mainline flights are departing once again. pic.twitter.com/PVPJVYbFjg
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 7, 2025
While the company vowed to fix the delays as soon as possible, a specific timeframe was not given at the time of compiling this report. Many passengers told media personnel that they were stuck at airports for at least a couple of hours. Airports in Chicago, Denver, Newark, Houston, and San Francisco were among those affected by the flight grounding. A passenger told the Fox News that some planes have been sitting for twice as long as they had been waiting. Some passengers were restricted to their planes after boarding, according to a Fox News report. On these flights, the pilot reportedly told passengers that there was no update on when they could get off the aircraft as none of the gates were available.
To put the delays and cancellations into further context, FlightAware, the website that offers real-time, historical, and predictive flight tracking data, stated that around 31% of the carrier’s flights were delayed and 1% had been cancelled as of 9:45 p.m. ET.
The grounding of flights was caused by a problem with the weight and balance computer system, United Airlines said. It took a few hours for the issue to be resolved, according to media reports. "The underlying technology issue has been resolved and while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations... 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," an official statement by the airline said.
Some reports said that flights that had taken off by the time the glitch was identified were allowed to continue their journey. They also added that the issue did not affect flights on United’s regional airlines (SkyWest Airlines, Republic Airways, CommuteAir, Air Wisconsin).
