Meme fest erupts as United Airlines fixed glitch that resulted in grounded planes across US

United Airlines passengers and social media users had a field day earlier today after a widespread computer glitch brought the airline’s operations to a grinding halt across the United States. United later confirmed that it was due to a technology, and Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, that the outage of the airline’s ‘weight and balance’ system led to hundreds of flights being grounded, causing significant delays and cancellations. While the technical hiccup was undoubtedly frustrating for travelers, it provided ample fodder for the internet’s creative minds, who quickly flooded social media with hilarious memes.

The outage began shortly after 6 pm ET on Wednesday, August 6, and affected major hubs like Chicago, Houston, Denver, Newark, and San Francisco. Flights already in the air were thankfully unaffected, but those on the ground were stuck, some even returning to gates after hours of waiting. The FAA issued ground stops at United’s request, ensuring no new flights departed until the problem was resolved. The airline worked quickly to fix the problem, and within a few hours, the underlying technology issue was resolved, though residual delays were expected to continue.

As the news of the grounding spread, so did the memes. One popular image circulating showed a person looking bewildered at a tangled mess of wires, captioned “United Airlines IT outage.”

Another, featuring a classic Steve Harvey reaction, perfectly captured the disbelief of many, asking “A United airlines tech outage?! Worldwide?! Oh I’ve seen this one before, who pushed the update to production without testing….”

The humor didn’t stop there. A GIF of a plane seemingly ‘twerking’ on the tarmac was shared with the caption “BREAKING: ALL UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHTS GROUNDED, after plane caught twerking on tarmac.”

Even the IT department wasn’t spared, with a video showing a parrot frantically jumping on the keyboard, humorously depicting the airline’s IT team at work.

Perhaps the most creative meme depicted a United Airlines plane with a turtle shell, suggesting that things had really slowed down for the airline.

While the situation was no laughing matter for stranded passengers, the internet’s ability to find humor in adversity provided a much-needed lighthearted take on the travel chaos. United Airlines has since apologized for the disruption and is working to get all affected passengers to their destinations.