United Airlines resumes flights, lifts nationwide ground stop after "systemwide technology issue"

CHICAGO (CBS) -- United Airlines halted all of its flights nationwide for more than an hour on Tuesday afternoon, due to "systemwide technology issue." 

The Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control System Command Center confirmed the Chicago-based airline had requested the ground stop for all of its flights due to an "equipment issue."

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, United said they were holding all of their planes at their departure airports due to a "systemwide technology issue."

The FAA confirmed the ground stop had been lifted as of around 12:50 p.m. Central Time, after being in place for more than an hour. United confirmed it was resuming flights. 

As of 1:30 p.m., flight tracking website FlightAware was reporting 48 delayed United flights at O'Hare International Airport, and no cancellations. Systemwide, there were 301 delayed United flights, and 7 cancellations.

Mary Korkor flew in from London on another airline on Tuesday, and was waiting for her partner's United flight to arrive at the time of the outage.

"Had to go through Dulles [International Airport] in Washington, and his flight was grounded, and so I'm sitting and waiting for him," "He had boarded, was supposed to take off, and then the plane just appeared to sit there."

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, United Airlines said, "a software update caused a widespread slowdown in United's technology systems." 

"If the computers go down, the airline cannot give the weight, the balance, the routing information, the weather information to their pilots – which they absolutely have to have before they push back from the gate. So this was affecting all departing flights on United Airlines," said CBS News travel editor Peter Greenberg.

United officials were investigating the cause of the problem, but insisted it was not a cybersecurity issue. No planes in flight were affected.

Greenberg said one important question is does United have a reliable backup system in place to prevent this from happening again?

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was briefed on the outage and vowed to assist passengers affected. 

U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said he was flying on a United plane cross country when the ground stop occurred and promised to investigate the cause. 

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