Originally Posted by
jan_believes
Before we get a full blown CO vs UA discussion, what I am getting from this is, the SHARES system is so burdensome in its application, that perhaps that's the reason why an agent would mention it's too much for the gate agent to handle a connect rebook.
When I advised the boarding agent I would not be taking the first leg seat cleared from standby, the work it took to get my bag back to the confirmed routing by the "free" gate agent through the computer (not handled by the boarding agent, ok?), surprised even me.
Sounds like SHARES.
In my situation, the GA had to type like a madman to sync up the ticket, and when she did, the downline segments got dropped. I called to get them reinstated, but the upgrade space was now gone, and they tried to tell me to re-waitlist for them (hell no, they'd already cleared previously). Getting them to re-force the upgrades and re-sync the ticket took over half an hour, not to mention the GA's 5-10 minutes to fix the ticket.
Everything looked fine, until the next day, when the downline segments dropped again, so had to go through the same drill again.
So the standby consumed the following staff minutes:
5 - TA arguing not to do it
10 - GA processing it
55 - 30 for the phone agent + 25 for a supervisor to reinstate dropped flights
55 - second call for second drop
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125 minutes (or about two hours) of people minutes.
We can try to avoid the CO vs. UA debate all we want, but SHARES is some serious baggage that came from the CO side, and the impact on customers and costs is real.