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Computer problem grounds United flights

United Airlines grounded takeoffs nationwide for nearly two hours Wednesday morning, snarling flights for thousands during the busy summer travel period because of a computer problem.

United Airlines grounded takeoffs nationwide for nearly two hours Wednesday morning, snarling flights for thousands during the busy summer travel period because of a computer problem.

It was the second computer woe for the Chicago-based carrier in five weeks. On June 2, about 150 flights were grounded because of an issue with the flight-dispatching system.

Five of United's 18 daily nonstop flights out of Philadelphia International Airport were delayed about two hours, said Mary Flannery, airport spokeswoman.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop at 9:20 a.m. Planes already in the air continued to fly.

"An issue with a router degraded network connectivity for various applications," United said in an e-mailed statement. "We fixed the router issue, which is enabling us to restore normal functions."

United has had computer problems since merging with Continental Airlines in 2010.

Some Twitter users expressed frustration, others gave advice on how to get the system back up. One suggested the glitch could have been avoided if United better monitored its infrastructure.

"We couldn't agree more," the Wilmington company SevOne noted in a blog on its website.

SevOne monitors and troubleshoots the performance of information technology networks and infrastructure for customers including Comcast, Vodafone, and Lockheed Martin to help them prevent outages such as United experienced.

Most companies, including United, have "multiple levels of redundancy" in their data networks, Vess Bakalov, SevOne's cofounder and chief technology officer, said.

"Even though there are ways for a router to fail that would not trigger the redundancies to kick in," Bakalov said, the operators should be able to identify the problem "in minutes and remove it from the network. Then the redundancies should take over."

However, legacy monitoring and management systems often are unable to keep pace with the ever-increasing growth in business demands, especially if that growth is sudden, as in a merger, Bakalov said.

Without a real-time view across the digital infrastructure, "operators and engineers take much longer to pinpoint and troubleshoot the root cause of a problem," he said. In United's case, it took a couple of hours.

In March 2012, when United switched to the passenger reservation system that had been used by Continental, there were flight cancellations, delays, failures at airport kiosks, and frustrated travelers. The problems persisted through 2012.

In February 2014, a computer problem stranded pilots and caused hundreds of United flight delays.

By contrast, in the 2008 merger of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, the two carriers took time in fully integrating the airlines' websites and ticket reservation systems.

American Airlines and merger partner US Airways, which have a hub and 460 daily flights in Philadelphia, are in the process of merging their complex reservations systems. A single system is expected in the fourth quarter.

Computer problems can affect every airline. In April, American delayed some flights when a software glitch prevented pilots from seeing some airport maps on their tablet computers.

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