United Airlines issued a ground stop for all departing United States and Canadian flights late Tuesday night.
The order marks the second time the company has had to ground flights recently, but the stoppage lasted less than an hour, according to Reuters.
In an statement provided to USA TODAY, United explained that it “experienced a brief connectivity issue just before midnight Central time on Tuesday, Sept. 23 but has since resumed normal operations.”
It’s unclear if any flights were delayed by the problem.
United experienced similar issues in August
Back on August 6, United temporarily grounded all flights due to an issue with its weight and balance computer system.
“Due to a technology issue, we are holding United mainline flights at their departure airports,” the airline said in a statement at the time. “We expect additional flight delays this evening as we work through this issue. Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations.”
The stoppage affected major United hubs such as Chicago, Denver, Newark and Houston. It did lead to some delays, but eventually, was “resolved.”
“We are working with customers to get them to their destinations after a technology disruption on Wednesday evening,” United announced on social media. “The underlying technology issue has been resolved, and, while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations.”
Similar problems at Alaska Airlines in July
An IT issue led to Alaska Airlines halting all flights for roughly three hours on the night of Sunday, July 20.
At around 11 p.m. PT that evening, operations resumed.
“A critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers, manufactured by a third-party, experienced an unexpected failure,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “When that happened, it impacted several of our key systems that enable us to run various operations, necessitating the implementation of a ground stop to keep aircraft in position. The safety of our flights was never compromised.
