United’s computer issues cause widespread delays

United Airlines passengers faced delays and long lines after some of its major computer systems and its website failed Tuesday.

The glitch was another in a long string of technology problems that began when United merged computer systems with Continental's in March.

United acknowledged at least 200 delayed flights. Its passenger reservation system and website stopped working for about two-and-a-half hours on Tuesday afternoon, although the precise cause wasn't known.

The outage didn't affect planes in flight.

Passengers in several United hubs reported very long lines at ticket counters. During the outage it stopped sending planes to its hubs in Newark, N.J., and San Francisco.

Alex Belo was waiting at Newark to get on a flight to Mexico City. He considered himself lucky to be behind only 100 or so people waiting to check a bag - because there were another 300 to 400 behind him.

"The line is not moving, or very slowly moving. And they're giving priority only to first class," he said.

United said it will not charge the usual change fees for passengers on affected flights who want to cancel or rebook their tickets. It apologized for the disruption.

Simon Duvall spent two hours sitting on his flight waiting for the computer problems to be resolved. People were calm but not happy, he said.

"We're on a plane, on the tarmac in Las Vegas in the middle of August. It's warm. It's uncomfortable. It's cramped," he said.

United Continental Holdings Inc. has been struggling with computer issues off and on since March, when it switched to using Continental's system for tracking passenger information. The two airlines merged in 2010.