July 8, 2015

All United Flights Worldwide Were Grounded Today


Thanks to an “automation” glitch early on Wednesday morning, United Airlines was forced to ground every single one of its flights. Worldwide. For a whole hour.

FAA

The massive error, which was lifted around 9:50 a.m., sparked long lines and confusion at airports. Though flights have finally begun to slowly take off, the system-wide grounding will undoubtedly throw a wrench into travelers’ plans today.

“We experienced a network connectivity issue this morning,” United said in a statement. “We are working to resolve this and apologize to our customers for any inconvenience.”

The system-wide notice, which follows June’s worldwide grounding, continues United’s reputation as one of the world’s worst airlines. So, business as usual!

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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