American Airlines to Move US Airways to Its Reservation System Oct. 17

[crazy4wdw]

American Airlines to Move US Airways to Its Reservation System Oct. 17

I just saw this info and now I am in panic mode. When do I fly out for my next WDW trip? October 17 on US Air. Wasn't there a major computer meltdown the last time two airlines merged and attempted to combine their reservation systems?

I am quite concerned about this.

 

[MillauFr]

Yes United is continuing to have serious operational issue to this day. Delta and Southwest on the other hand have had no major problems. I'm sure your flight on American will go off without a hitch. Plus the American West executives that took over US Air already have experience from integrating that company. Now that they are taking over American it should go even smoother.

 

[SuzanneSLO]

American Airlines to Move US Airways to Its Reservation System Oct. 17

I just saw this info and now I am in panic mode. When do I fly out for my next WDW trip? October 17 on US Air. Wasn't there a major computer meltdown the last time two airlines merged and attempted to combine their reservation systems?

I am quite concerned about this.

I share your concerns as we a flying home on October 17. We are now US out and AA return.

All US flights on or after 10/17 will get new flight numbers next Saturday (7/18). You should get an email with your updated flight information shortly thereafter. In the meantime, make sure that your email address is current. -- Suzanne

 

[jec6613]

You'll be fine, mostly because the US reservation system is already subordinate to SABRE* (AA's reservation system). When you book on the US system, it then requests the flight from SABRE, so you are already booked on a combined system, you just didn't know it, and have been since about February or so. SABRE is the system that handles flight dispatching and all of the stuff that UA/CO have had melt down. The major movement on October 17th is that the US front-end will go away and you will book directly into SABRE through AA, which means that the worst possible thing that can happen is that you can't book flights through US, only through AA ... since they're the same flights with the same numbers and pricing, not exactly a big deal.

Also, most flights will not get new numbers, they already changed most of them so there are very few overlapping numbers between AA and US.

The big danger point was back in February or so when the US reservation system was made subordinate to SABRE, and that went off without a hitch.

*SABRE is an acronym, hence the all caps, I'm not yelling.

 

[DebbieB]

I have a trip PIT-LAX next month. When I booked it last September it was an American flight and I booked it on American's system. Not long after, they changed it to a USAirways flight. So my reservation has both an American confirmation # and a USAirways confirmation #. It was originally an 8:00am departure, then they moved it to 10:00am and then to 6:25am. I just got notice today of the time change, 4 weeks out.

 

[jec6613]

I have a trip PIT-LAX next month. When I booked it last September it was an American flight and I booked it on American's system. Not long after, they changed it to a USAirways flight. So my reservation has both an American confirmation # and a USAirways confirmation #. It was originally an 8:00am departure, then they moved it to 10:00am and then to 6:25am. I just got notice today of the time change, 4 weeks out.

I've had a few of those too, it's why I've been booking my international flights on codeshares, not with AA, unfortunately - so far both on QR and BA. They're, "Banking," their hubs, and removing redundant flights and upsizing aircraft, so the LAX flight keeps moving as they're trying to maximize connections to ANC, HNL and the T-Pac flights. Not too much you can do, unfortunately, this has by far been my biggest annoyance with the merger - and since most of my flights are hub-hub (NYC to LAX and ORD) I'm not affected as much as most people. :/

 

[crazy4wdw]

I share your concerns as we a flying home on October 17. We are now US out and AA return.

All US flights on or after 10/17 will get new flight numbers next Saturday (7/18). You should get an email with your updated flight information shortly thereafter. In the meantime, make sure that your email address is current. -- Suzanne

Thanks! I checked my reservation today and the flight numbers are the same ....... but they had me scheduled on three different flights from Charlotte to Orlando on 10/17! It didn't take long to AA to fix the error. From info I've read, AA will be gradually moving flight reservations from US Air to American so hopefully there will not be computer issues on 10/17 or beyond.

 

[ParrotBill]

Amazing that American and US Airways can pull this off so quickly, yet it tool Southwest more than 2 years to finish off, I mean, merge with Airtrain.