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The New York TimesPassengers were stranded at airports across the country Friday night after a failure in United Airlines’ computer system, the airline said.
The disruption set off widespread delays at airports in San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, with many passengers left sitting in terminals or stuck on planes that were grounded.
United said in a statement that the problems began at 8:15 p.m. New York time, when the computer failure knocked out its flight departures, airport processing and reservations systems. The statement did not address the nationwide delays, and a spokesman did not return a phone call seeking comment.
It was not clear what had set off the computer failure, but United said in its statement that it had a technology team in place that was struggling to restore the system.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/18united.html