Originally Posted by
From NYC
2 - Have one confirmation number across all flights, even codeshares. - As a corollary to the above, though not really a CO.com issue. On the Bozeman itinerary above, when I went to the NW lounges and showed them my tickets, it turned out that NW had a different confirmation number for my flights, and it took the desk agent about 10 minutes to sort through it all to find it and give me new and upgraded boarding passes. If this hasn’t changed yet, it should, although I recognize this requires coordination with the partner airlines - a whole separate issue in itself.
This is not going to be possible. Continental made the booking in their RES system (Shares) since it is on a partner carrier made a duplicate booking with a different locator on Northwest's System (PARS). They are linked in the record so I'm not sure where the confusion is from the NW side. If you give the agents your last name and flight number it should be easy to find your booking. No different if you checked in on line or through the kiosks at the airport.
It's the same issue if you booked through a travel agent. If they have a Sabre terminal, but booked on CO flights you're going to get a Sabre locator and a CO locator. They should be synced in real time so any change to either booking should be reflected in the copy version.
The RES systems between CO and NW are unique and very different. CO is running a IBM mainframe and Northwest is using Unisys. Northwest has a completely unique inventory control mechanism compared to Continental. I don't know that this is still true, but the International and Domestic inventory management systems at NW aren't even the same. NW still thinks it's two airlines, (Northwest Orient and Republic), in the head office in certain departments.
That being said it would be virtually impossible for CO and NW to create identical locators for every codeshare booking.