Originally Posted by
gilfiom
Just to report back, I flew GLA - LHR - MEX last week on seperate PNR's and was checked through to Mexico without a word from me. So it appears a patchy implementation of the rules or perhaps some softening, which depends on status/ routes/ cabin.
Good old BA!
Here is my theory.
Somehow the "automatically find connections" feature in Amadeus Altea (DCS) got turned on. With this feature turned on, the system automatically crawls and searches for check-in records (Customer Record in Amadeus terminology) that it thinks are candidates for getting merged as they may belong to the same "customer".
Amadeus Altea is designed on the basis of serving "the customer" as opposed to "a single booking" (this is contrary to BA's philosophy where you are looked at as "just another booking" as opposed to a customer).
There usually has to be some sort of key identifying information in each booking that are are common across bookings for merging to automatically occur. For example, the passenger name (SMITH/JOHN MR and SMITH/JOHN are seen as two different passengers and won't automatically be merged) must match exactly on both bookings, API information such as date of birth, passport number, full name etc. much match exactly before automatically merging.
Sometimes when the system is unsure whether to merge the check-in records (eg. due to different FF numbers, name too common etc.), it prompts the agent for manual intervention. In this case, check-in agents would have automatically answered "no" when the system asks "do you want to merge?".
While in other cases, the the check-in records may have already been automatically merged when the check-in agent goes into it and is not aware the check-in record is a result of two or more records being merged.