United Airlines said it was an employee mistake that caused the computer problem that halted all of its flight departures around the world for two hours Wednesday morning.
In a message to employees, United chief operating officer Pete McDonald said it was “human error, during routine system testing” that shut down its Unimatic system used for operations to dispatch flights.
At least 268 United flights were delayed and 24 canceled by the outage, with an average delay of about an hour and a half.
An employee “made a mistake and caused the failure of both Unimatic and our backup system,” McDonald said. “By 10 a.m., Unimatic was up and running with enough capacity to operate the airline. Working overnight, the ISD (information-services division) team restored the system.”
The airline still had “a handful” of delays this morning, according to chief executive Glenn Tilton. Nearly 69 percent of flights were on time as of this morning, according to McDonald.
“We have to continue to work hard to keep these kinds of errors from impacting our customers and the rest of our company,” McDonald said.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
