United Airlines computers go down, stranding travelers
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of United Airlines passengers around the globe are stranded at airports and on planes after another computer outage at the world's largest carrier.
This is at least the third major computer outage for the Chicago-based airline since June.
"Does anyone have a Radio Shack computer or abacus to help United get their system fixed?," tweeted Lewis Franck, a motorsports writer who was flying from Newark, New Jersey to Miami Thursday 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?"
United Continental Holdings Inc. spokesman Charles Hobart said the airline was aware of a computer issue affecting some of its flights and was working to resolve it.
Passengers are being told by pilots and airport agents that computers are down and they don't know when the system will come back. Some fliers have been waiting nearly 2 hours to depart.
Judd Shapiro of Nashua, New Hampshire said he got to the gate at Logan Airport in Boston and agents told him and other frustrated fliers that planes could land but not take off.
"JetBlue is taking off, American is taking off, but United is on the ground," he said. "I was having a flawless airport experience until I got to the gate."
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.
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 and he was worried about missing another. So he walked off the plane and bought a $195 last-second ticket on a Southwest Airlines flight to Oakland, California.
"I'm frustrated because I'm missing a meeting that I thought I had plenty of time for," Silverstein said.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
I've been a loyal United customer for half of forever, but I never got one of their computers to go down on me.
Iraqi cyber pay back!
On a positive note, having the computers go down stranding travelers is a lot better than the plane going down and killing travelers.
Well that left more time for the TSA chi-mo's to do thier molestation,degridation,police state thing.
Just wait until teleportation is a reality and the computer goes down during transport. Hopefully they will have the people backed up on a hard drive.
they need to replace there IT personnel
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The system needed some reworking to make it easier to use? And it's gone down three times since? I'd hate to be the ones at the counters, cause you know this is their fault. They designed the program, they made it fail. If you yell at them long enough, it'll fix it.
Oh boy, that'll make for some (justifiably) unhappy customers..! Â Â :-(
its a conspiracy
Time to get a whole new OS. That just kills everything.
 @washcomom Back in the day when I used to work for them they used Tandem Nonstop systems, and maybe they still do. More than likely its a network issue. The systems are pretty rock solid.