Well, the plan, at least PMUA, was to work towards switching to Amadeus - which many * partners use/are switching to. For sure LH-group carriers use it, as do, I believe, TG, TK, OZ - probably others. Believe * was encouraging - perhaps even incentivizing, members to get on Amadeus to make it more consistent across the airlines - making it easier for things like seat selection. Amadeus also allows one to have the same PNR across multiple carriers that use them (I.e, currently if you have an itinerary with a segment on LH and TG, both carriers use a common PNR for the entire reservation and Im sure allows easier back-end handling for partners, since it uses the same platform. UA abondoned he switch though - after investing some in it - not sure if it was at the point they decided to move to SHARES with the merger, or if they gave up for some reason at some point earlier.