United Airlines' U.S. departures have all been halted because of a computer fault, the second such setback for the carrier in less than six weeks.
"Automation issues" triggered the move, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday. United flights already airborne are continuing to operate, according to aircraft-tracking website Flightradar24.
"We experienced a network connectivity issue this morning," United spokesman Luke Punzenberger said by e-mail. "We are working to resolve this and apologize to our customers for any inconvenience."
Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport spokesman Shane Carter said all United departures at the Little Rock airport were temporarily halted but said shortly after 9 a.m. that the system was back up and flights were resuming.
“We’re told the computer system is back up, and in Little Rock, things are getting back to normal,” Carter said. Carter said one flight was about to depart shortly after 9 a.m., and the airline would be working on getting back on schedule as the day progressed. He didn’t know how many flights were affected while the system was down.
Kelly Johnson, director of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport said a 7:45 a.m. flight to Chicago was canceled and another was delayed by about 45 minutes Wednesday morning.
Three flights to Houston were delayed for several minutes each. All service was restored by 8:50 a.m., Johnson said.
“It was not horrible,” Johnson said.
United suffered a similar incident June 2, when the world's second-largest airline cited a lack of "proper dispatch information" that forced a halt in U.S. takeoffs for less than an hour. Planes in the air weren't affected in that episode either.
Check back here for updates, and read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
Information for this article was contributed by Alan Levin and Lauren Thomas of Bloomberg News and by Gavin Lesnick of Arkansas Online.