Updated Wednesday, July 8 – 7:30 a.m.
A computer problem affecting United Airlines grounded its fleet throughout the nation for a time today, delaying 10 outbound flights at Los Angeles International Airport, with delays expected to continue as crews work to bring things back to normal.
Two inbound flights that already landed at LAX were also affected because outbound aircraft were still at gates, according to Mary Grady of Los Angeles World Airports.
“We were told by United their computer system is out nationwide,” Grady said about 6:30 a.m., adding that the outage would affect flights at LAX and other Southern California airports.
United told airports the computer glitch had been fixed, Grady told KNX around 6:45 a.m.
And about 20 minutes later, LAX tweeted: “United Airlines computer system is back up and operating. Please contact United directly for flight status.”
Passenger were waiting in long lines at Terminals 7 and 8, and LAX officials urged travelers to allow more time than usual.
Grady said the flight-scheduling problems were expected to be easier to handle than might have been the case because the outage occurred early in the morning.