You always have to babysit any reservation made by SHARES -- especially when partners are involved.

One of my favorite stories involves a mixed UA and LX F reservation booked using CO miles at the time. I run into a FT buddy in a RCC on the outbound, and we talk about my ticket. He reminds me that since I'm on a CO ticket, I should keep an eye on the partner space.

I had been doing that all along, even printed out the UA and LX ressies the day before the trip. We look at the ressies right then and there in the club, and they're still fine.

Several hours later, in another city, I load up the ressies, and sure enough, our LX F return for ZRH-JFK is gone. The outbound is fine, and the connecting JFK-SFO is fine.

I call up CO, and they blame LX. Of course I know it's CO and SHARES, so I call over to LX, who proves it's CO. I get them on the horn together, and LX manages to finally prove to CO that it was CO who sent something from their SHARES system that caused the deletion of the segment.

We ultimately got the flight reinstated, but not after spending significant time brokering the deal.

But the point is, always babysit any reservation from SHARES, especially if it involves partners.


It probably was something that CO did like in my example above. We don't hear these kinds of reports of OZ issues with tickets issued by other carriers (including tickets that used to be issued by PMUA).