United Airlines Reservation System Crashes (Again)

A United plane in Chicago

United Airlines’ computer systems failed Wednesday morning and the problem caused significant disruptions for passengers who had planned travel on the airline.

A spokesman for the airline said that its Shares passenger service system failed at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time.  The disruption lasted approximately 30 minutes but it was followed by sporadic failures that continued throughout the morning.

The airline reported that its systems were back up and running in the early afternoon.

Numerous passengers took to social media to voice their frustration.  Nicholas Evans tweeted that his flight was delayed two hours due to the crash and he was stuck in Peoria.

United responded to numerous tweets, and said it is “working to get our customers to their destinations as soon as possible.”  The airline apologized to passengers for any inconvenience caused by the outage. but Matthew Doyle’s tweet injected some humor into the situation, when he said he was pretty sure that the airline’s computer system was “just an old Commodore 64.”

Chicago-based United Continental Holdings has had multiple system outages since the company was formed by the merger of United Airlines with Continental Airlines in 2010.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)