The CO ticketing process is very annoying. Last night I booked a reservation online at continental.com. I thought everything was good to go. Luckily, I checked the reservation, and it said on hold. I called CO to have it ticketed. The reservationist says wait 5 to 10 minutes, and it will be ticketed. If I would not have checked, then the reservation would have expired in 1 day.

Other airlines such as UA / US / DL have instant ticketing. I hope when the reservation systems are combined that this practice of "wait-and-see" does not get adopted. This is extremely irritating. So, is CO checking each and every reservation manually to decide if they want to ticket the reservation or not? Can they say no to the ticketing, for example if you got a very good fare?

Thanks for your help.