Hoff
** Update: I guess he wasn't kidding! That's realtime blogging for you folks!
I blogged this from my phone via email whilst the failure occurred. The good news is that the delay rippled through the entire schedule, so my connector in Denver to Oakland was also delayed, so I made the flight ;)
Here's a link from Bloomberg as an update regarding the failure:
United Air Says Computer Failure Blocked All Takeoffs (Update5)
By Susanna Ray
June 20 (Bloomberg) -- UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, the world's second-biggest carrier, stopped all takeoffs around the globe for more than two hours today after the failure of the computer that controls flight operations.
The outage lasted from 9 to 11 a.m. New York time, delaying about 268 flights and forcing 24 cancellations, the Chicago- based airline said. United said it was investigating and hoped to resume normal operations by tomorrow.
United relies on the computer that broke down today for everything needed to dispatch flights, including managing crew scheduling and measuring planes' weight and balance, spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said. Federal law requires weight-and-balance assessments for passenger flights before takeoff.
A worldwide grounding from a computer fault is ``very unusual,'' said Darryl Jenkins, an independent aviation consultant in Marshall, Virginia. ``Somewhere there was a massive failure.''
...
Delays, Cancellations
Delays at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the world's second-busiest and United's main hub, averaged one to two hours, said Wendy Abrams, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Airport System. Officials opened gates at the international terminal to unload stranded United passengers.
United has a backup for its Unimatic system, ``and we're investigating why that didn't work,'' Urbanski said. Planes airborne during the breakdown were allowed to keep flying, she said.
Preflight weight-and-balance checks are an important safety step. Improper loading reduces speed, efficiency, climbing rates and maneuverability, according to a Federal Aviation Administration handbook. Those changes, combined with abnormal stresses on an aircraft, can lead to crashes.
The Unimatic system ``handles all the operational parts of the airline,'' said Rick Maloney, a former United vice president for flight operations who is now dean of the aviation college at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
`Well Protected'
``That system is so well protected,'' Maloney said in an interview. ``I'm really pretty surprised.''
Companywide shutdowns because of computer glitches are infrequent, said Robert Mann of R.W. Mann & Co., a Port Washington, New York-based consultant. ``But every airline has been bitten at one time or another by system failures of this sort, whether they be dispatch, departure control, passenger service, kiosks, communications, baggage or some other.''
Today's delays will add to the industry's tardiness so far this year.
U.S. airlines managed only 72.5 percent of flights on time this year through April, the worst rate since the federal government began keeping track in the current format in 1995, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Consultants including Jenkins said today's computer meltdown shouldn't damage United's long-term reputation. ``These are things that you recover from,'' he said.