http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum75/HTML/000022.html
I notice in this "Technical" Forum a number of folks posting that AA, UA or The Buzz is down etc, and a whole pile more agreeing and asking FT for a response.
I notice that the "Official Announcement" Forum has a post made by Michael that the UA board is down. I did a search and see that is the ONLY time in the past year that Forum has been used to make such an announcement of a service problem. Seems the perfect place to make such a announcement, and is how eBay, Yahoo etc respond to service outages.
Just that in the past it does not seem to have been used by the FT techies, so no-one here probably looks at it much? Good move Michael, and in future I'll check that Forum first if having a problem accessing any Forum. (Which lately as many say, have been often experiencing tech access problems.) Hope the wrinkles smooth out for you and your colleagues.