All United Continental flights in the U.S. were grounded temporarily Wednesday due to computer problems.
Less than two hours later, United requested the Federal Aviation Administration lift the ground stop order, FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said.
The delays have been cleared at Orlando International Airport, but some still have travel headaches ahead.
Virginia Combs was packed and ready to head to an island off of Washington state but once she got to the United Airlines check-in counter, she found out she wasn't going anywhere.
"I was supposed to leave," she said. "So I miss my flight in Houston, so I've got another flight out of Houston which puts me late in Seattle. However, I have to take a ferry over to an island. I don't know how late that runs."
OIA officials said 10 planes were set take off when the FAA announced they were grounded.
A passenger in San Francisco said about 10 a.m. Eastern that passengers were being asked to board planes again.
United cited “network connectivity” for the problems.
It is the second time in two months that the carrier has been hit by major technical issues.
The Chicago company had halted all takeoffs in the U.S. on June 2 due to what the airline described as computer automation issues.
The Federal Aviation Administration used the same language in its notice about the outage Wednesday.
United suffered a series of computer problems in 2012 after switching to a passenger information computer system previously used by merger partner Continental Airlines.
In each case, hundreds of flights were delayed. A number of high-paying business travelers defected to other airlines and revenue dropped.
“We don’t know everything behind this morning’s issues yet, but today’s incident underscores the sense that something is very wrong at United,” said Gary Leff, co-founder of frequent-flier website MilePoint.
Officials at the Albuquerque Sunport said United flights to and from the Sunport were impacted.
WFTV
