Originally Posted by FightingIlliniUAL
Implicitly, it is a cost reduction as the motive is to shift passengers to booking online instead of calling in. The medium-term goal would be to close calling centers and lay off reservation agents with the hope that fewer people are going to call in. The same holds for award reservation agents.
Didn't they just hire a lot of new res. agents in HNL and somewhere else (the location escapes me now)? If they really wanted customers to book online more, they would fix that piece of junk. It's the worse booking engine of all the ones I've used.