United Airlines is suffering a computer system malfunction that stranded pilots and caused canceled flights, evidence the company is still struggling to integrate Continental Airlines more than three years after the merger closed, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The breakdown contributed to the scrapping of almost 1,500 flights as the airline also grappled with unseasonably cold weather, said the people - five United employees who were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. United's crew desk lost track of hundreds of pilots around the world since Dec. 30 as the system erroneously reported which pilots would control specific flights, the employees said.

The technology problem is the latest in a string of miscues that have dogged United parent's Chicago-based United Continental Holdings Inc. since the 2010 merger. The issue was amplified by tighter federal limits on pilot duty hours, which took effect Jan. 4 as a winter storm and plunging temperatures thinned pilot ranks at its Chicago and Newark, N.J., hubs.

"The company has brought on the perfect storm for our pilots, exacerbating the subzero temps and snow," Jay Heppner, who heads United's pilots' union, wrote in a Jan. 4 letter to members and obtained by Bloomberg News. "In the communications received from our pilots, we are hearing about an operation which is coming apart at the seams."


Computer issues and new federal duty limits "created a nightmare" for United pilots and crew schedulers, said Christopher Cooke, a spokesman for the union representing United flight attendants.

Continental's system
Crew-scheduling woes started after the second-largest U.S. carrier shifted all 10,200 of its pilots to a system previously used only by Continental pilots on Dec. 30, the United employees said.

David Messing, a United spokesman, declined to discuss any issues regarding the change.

"We worked hard to support our pilots as we have made changes to their routines at the same time we have faced unprecedented bad weather," Messing said in a phone interview. "As we began complying with the new regulations, we were combining our pilot scheduling systems. We are making progress each day in making all of the new processes easier for our crew members."

Dave Kelly, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, said Heppner wasn't available for an interview.

Pilots said they had difficulty logging on to the system, known as CCS, for Crew Communication System, which shows everything from trip assignments to pay stubs.

The new technology required three passwords, said a United captain, and was prone to crashing. Once logged on, he found it difficult to navigate and the information that was available was largely out of date. Flights were even assigned to pilots who are retired or deceased. When pilots tried to call for help, they sometimes sat on hold for more than an hour.

Another pilot, based in Chicago, said that every time he logged on to the crew-scheduling system in recent days, a different person was listed as the captain of the flight he was supposed to fly.

He had difficulty calling in to the swamped scheduling department to straighten out matters, which caused him to be late on several of the flights, the pilot said.

Testing 'on the fly'
"The company is field-testing the CCS system on the fly, several months behind schedule, and fixing issues as they arise," Heppner wrote in the letter to pilots. "At the same time we are switching bidding systems," adding the new scheduling system and reacting to the realities of the new pilot rest rules.

United canceled 1,467 mainline flights from Jan. 1 through Jan. 8, and more than 8,700 when including its regional and commuter airlines, according to flight data analyzer masFlight. Other carriers also scrapped large parts of their schedules as they contended with frigid temperatures in the Eastern U.S. and the same new federal restrictions on pilot flying time, known as FAR 117.

SFGate source United cancels flights over computer troubles - SFGate