All United Airlines Flights Grounded in US Over Potential Flight Plan Issues

Jeanne Marie Hoffman June 2, 2015 Flights, News Leave a comment

United grounded all its flights for about an hour this morning.

According to Wired, United hasn’t given specific reasons, but people have been tweeting information as they hear it.

Though United hasnâ€™t indicated the cause for the grounding, tweets from onboard passengers and a news report have indicated various possible reasons.

â€œUnited began delaying flights at approximately 8 a.m. CT to ensure aircraft departed with proper dispatching information,â€ United spokesman Charles Hobart wrote an in email to WIRED. â€œWe resumed departures at about 8:40 CT and are accommodating our customers to their destinations.â€

But here are some of the tweets from customers on actual flights:

@gabestein engines just spun up again so maybe resolved? Pilot said flight plan system had been spitting out “random plans over and over”

â€” Ted Benson (@edwardbenson) June 2, 2015

All United flights at IAD are held up because erroneous flight plans have been filed and need to be redone. Anyone know more? I am stuck.

â€” Stuart Staniford (@stuartstaniford) June 2, 2015

Andy from @UnitedAirlines is telling us that flight plans from planes in the AIR dropped flight plans. 10:30am (1 hour from now) next update

â€” Chris Habets (@C_Habets) June 2, 2015

@united apparently having some problems filing flight plans this morning. Sitting in the penalty box waiting for clearance

â€” Rob Sutton (@TheFlyiGuy) June 2, 2015

Recently, American Airlines flights were grounded over iPad issues–but that definitely was not to this level and was aircraft specific (737s).

There is speculation of hacking, but there’s also speculation of IT failures. Â So I’m going to sit tight until we hear what really happened.