Originally Posted by
sbm12
Based on what? Are you saying that UA doesn't IDB specifically because of Apollo? If it is related to SHARES then why doesn't US IDB more often?
I'd love to see any evidence that CO has historically IDB'd customers because their GAs simply couldn't figure out how to do VDBs on the computers. Either way they've got a bunch of typing to do, right? So what's the difference whereby SHARES makes it easier for CO to IDB customers than to VDB them. The claim doesn't make much sense.
It's hard to make an exact claim of reasons, but there are a few likely candidates that come to mind:
-auctioning of compensation (start with paltry 200 and increase once you have no takers)
-generally offer poor rebooking alternatives (UA is happy to rebook you on any airline of your choice even non-star in under a minute, whereas CO generally tries to stick to themselves even if several days later). You could argue this is both policy and systems (part of the reason CO doesn't like to rebook on other carriers does relate to the difficulty of doing it)
-terrible volunteer experience (whereas united will generally tell you whether you're needed as the plane starts boarding, co has no clue until everyone has boarded and overheads are full; electronic vdb list isn't used so you really have to hover around the GA even more)
While there are a few policy matters about this (e.g. auctioning), most of the reasons CO VDB process is abysmal compared to UA does somehow relate to their systems. But yes, this isn't causation (hence the "potential" in channa's post).