Fiordland

Dragons are good as gate keepers. Nice to the people they let in and scary to the ones that don't belong. However they have been know to use their fire breathing powers on the unsuspecting IT-elf that screws up their systems. Some may try to win over the IT Elfs by providing a lounge cookie or two as a reward after fixing IT. Since the catering has gone down hill the reward is not that great anymore. End result the Elfs don't keep them as up to date on IT changes as they should.

yyznomad

I'm flying an hour before the outage, and shortly after the start of the outage.
Will report anything worthwhile...

zrh2yvr

I would expect since DCS is not cutting over yet - and because DCS creates flights 48 hours out (with lots of time to sort out PNL pull issues) the airport operations should run quite normal. Other than the upgrade restrictions, I would think this will be a non-event as far as being at the airport is considered.

However - I would not be surprised if a few reservations go through the cracks somehow - or some late changes don't flow into DCS properly . . . . .

Bokehman

I have a multi-city trip for next June I was going to book today with my Aeroplan points. Is is better to wait a few days, despite what AC says about bookings being secure?

Jebby_ca

I would book your Aeroplan ticket now - availability may not be there by the time the system comes back up.

shadowspar

fwiw, I'm flying tomorrow morning too; YAM-YYZ-YUL-MUC-CGN. Ticketed on 014; flying everything up to YUL on AC metal, everything after on LH.

Only took me two tries to get through OLCI in the new Air Canada app just now, so things are going relatively smoothly so far.

YOWCDNFF

This has also been confirmed by two concierges in different cities that have received the training...

Basically, the system is not allowing someone to hold two seats so as soon as your standby is cleared, it does indeed gives up your seat on the other flight. So let's say you are flying in J and get a confirmed standby in Y, that J seat is being released. The other impact impact will be on "flight protecttions" ie: being booked on two flights just in case... Concierge have confirmed that the new system won't allow them to do so... as soon as you are booked on the new flight... that's it, your seat on the original flight will be released.

yyz_atc_qq

There are 2 parts of this that may or may not be an issue.

The first post that dealt with standby and Amadeus inferred that once you were put on standby (not confirmed yet) that you lost your confirmed seat. This response is different that the inference in the first one. Which is it? Lose your confirmed seat as soon as put on standby or lose your confirmed seat as soon as your new flight is confirmed.

Flight Protections - I’ve dealt with this issue before, and the way around it was to create a new PNR rather than add the segment to the existing one. Other airlines didn’t want to do it, because if someone forgot to cancel the space that wasn’t used/necessary it would potentially impact the availability for others that are impacted by IRROPS. I don’t know if AC concierges will consider creating a new PNR to hold space.... but it’s theoretically possible.

RatherBeInYOW

The first part doesn't make any sense. What is "confirmed standby" ... as in your get a confirmed seat for what you are standing by for? In that case it is no different than today; if I am on ACX and I stand by for ACY earlier then I have one confirmed seat and one standby seat. If my stand by for ACY is turned in to a confirmed change at the gate then I give up my seat on ACX.

For the second part, if they give up protecting us on later flights then this is going to be a disaster. AC concierges do this literally all the time; I had a concierge do this for me this morning, without me even asking, in case I misconnected in YYZ (in the end I did not). If they take this away things are going to get very ugly in IRROPS and it is a major devaluation of SE.

24left

Many of my inbounds to YVR TPAC sectors were so late in the past 2.5 years, that I missed my connections and the concierges protected me on later flights. This allowed them to monitor if the flight would be so late, it would completely miss the original cnx.. While we are enroute, if they see we might make it, they may help expedite things on the ground in YVR.

I alway book the most time I can, not the shortest cnx, but at least 1 TPAC route only offers a max cnx of 1hr 45 and the next one is 5+ hours away. I'm not waiting for the red-eyes if I don't have to.

So, if the protection feature is, in fact, removed from options that concierges have,should I assume that leaves ALL of us then requiring rebooking only once we arrive in YVR, for e.g.? That should be fun.

Nitehawk

Hmm, these standby and protection issues are obvious downgrades/removal of useful features. Surely Amadeus will support them again in the future or maybe concierges can create extra ticket numbers to facilitate.

YOWCDNFF

Unfortunately, I cannot offer greater clarity on this specific issue, as this was a fairly quick discussion. What is known is that the "process" for standbys will be different than what it is today from a system perspective and this will lead to a poorer "experience for our frequent flyers"; and those are exact words that I am quoting. I know that when standing by and that seats where only available in a different class of service, the gate agent would usually check in with you as to whether this was acceptable before "confirming". My recollection of the short discussion is that the new system may not allow this type of agent intervention, at least not initially - so your J seat would be gone on the spot for the other flight and getting back to it, from what I understand, could prove to be more problematic than before if you were to refuse the standby. Agreed that this is not totally different than before, but the speed at which all of this is happening, especially on Rapidair flights that could be processed simultaneously, could cause a few surprises...

YOWCDNFF

My understanding of the discussion is that you choose one or the other - if you make the decision to get "protected" just in case, you are effectively being moved to the new flight. Now, a few have mentioned creating "phantoms" PNRs to deal with this. Whether Concierge will be allowed to do so and this feature is available - this was not mentioned as part of the short discussions I've had in the last month or so. I know some Concierges I spoke to have mentioned the willingness to go "above and beyond" and I will leave it at that so that no one gets in trouble...

24left

I was told the "phantom' or "ghosting" of PNRs is going away. If all of the tools that the concierges - or other AC agents - can use to move pax along to their flights are removed, it will just be more work for staff even if the new Amadeus system is better for AC overall.

skybluesea

delete