United Airlines is going bankrupt. That’s what all the major news sources were reporting over the weekend. It seems that United was the last to know. The latest debacle in the Airline Industry began when an archived article that appeared in the Florida Sun Sentinel in 2002 was noted as the most popular story on their site. This caused Google to believe that the story was new because of the high number of page views which in turn created a disaster for the airline.

When investors saw that the story was being published all across the web and by Bloomberg News they went crazy trying to offload their stock as quickly as possible. Of course one thing led to another and soon shares of United had plummeted. The problem with this is that United Airlines is not in financial trouble. When asked to make a comment on the news story a spokesman for United said reports were caused by, “the irresponsible posting of a six year old Chicago Tribune Article.”

News travels fast in the internet age and because of this story nearly 15 million shares of United were unloaded in a matter of minutes brining the stock prices down to $3 per share. Since the issue was cleared up United stock has risen back to it’s pre “horror story” price prompting many to question the reliability of the internet.

Learn more at: www.united.com