United Airlines Reveals Cause Behind Latest Ground Stop in US, Canada

United Airlines briefly stopped all departing flights in the United States and Canada Tuesday evening.

The airline confirmed the ground stop in an email to TravelPulse explaining that the carrier “experienced a brief connectivity issue just before midnight Central Time on Tuesday.”

The stop lasted about 36 minutes, according to United and was apparently triggered by maintenance that was being conducted.

“During routine maintenance, our ability to connect to our technology network failed. Connections were quickly restored using backup systems,” United said in its statement to TravelPulse.

The incident marks the second time in two months that United has issued a ground stop. On August 6 United grounded planes nationwide, resulting in over 1,000 delays and more than 200 cancellations. 

According to an Associated Press report at the time, the issue was caused by a problem with the airline's weight and balance computer system, which was resolved after a few hours.

Last night’s outage was unrelated to the August disruption. It was also not linked to any cybersecurity threat, according to the United spokesperson.

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