J.Edward

Maybe not --

Yes the website is an important component of the business, but an even larger IT issue is what backend system to keep post merger.

Placing Halbert (UA) in charge of IT suggest to me that Apollo will be the GDS going forward and hopefully they can *finally* dump SHARES.

Moreover, the website has made leaps and bounds form where it was a few years ago - granted it still has a long way to go, but FWIW, it's certainly improved.

BryanIAH

While I prefer CO's website over .bomb, I am anxious to see if this results in more fare mistakes on the new UA's part.

ConciergeMike

When ARE they happy?

CHIC SILBER

No good can come from this

Renard

CO's philosophy of releasing reward seats (very conservative-especially premium cabins-along with close-in) combined with Starnet blocking is a bit scary..... let's hope that is not the result

channa

I'm with J.Edward on this. And I'll take it a step further.

From an IT perspective, the website is only one piece of it. UA's back-end systems overall are far more robust than CO's. The agents have much more ability, and tasks such as rebooking and reissuing are much simpler and faster on the UA side.

Additionally, UA's systems are already able to handle upsells, while CO's systems are only partially. CO has a huge limitation in that it's agents can't debit miles or for many issues, even money. A lot of the newer upsells (e.g., ELR, F seats) allow this functionality only via the kiosk or web (newer front ends vs. at the TA, GA or PC terminal). UA does not have this limitation. If you want to upgrade, the RCC can pull your miles for a flight leaving in an hour. If you want to to by E+, no problem, any agent can do it.

There are a few other things, like how UA exchanges tickets -- UA has the ability to exchange an old ticket against a new PNR, for example, or even exchange multiple tickets against a new PNR (e.g., say you have two or three unused tickets and want to apply them against a new, more expensive ticket).

That's not to say UA is completely clean, there are issues as well, but there are significant back end functions that UA seems to do generally better. Which leads me to believe they will stick with united.com over co.com simply because of the level of effort required to forklift co.com to UA's backend vs. just keeping united.com and building the functionality that co.com has that united.com doesn't.

The two key pieces that co.com has that united.com doesn't that I can think of are partner awards and the upgrade/standby lists. The former they're already working on (US/CO are now available on united.com -- they just need to keep adding more), and I'm sure the latter is easier to build than it would be to move the website to work with a different back end. Besides, assuming SHARES is gone, they would have to rebuild that functionality anyway.


+1

Though this guy appears to be Atkinson's boss, so it may not be so bad.

Steph3n

Sure plenty good CAN come of it, why be so pessimistic?

BearX220

I reserve judgment. But I don't think it's necessarily bad that a UA person runs loyalty. I look at how bizarrely loyal UA FTers have been to such an overall dysfunctional airline, and think loyalty might be the only thing UA executes really well -- better than branding, marketing, IT, employee training, etc.

sbm12

Not sure why...that's not an IT function; it is a revenue management function. And UA has historically had many more mistakes and great value fares than CO has, at least from what I've seen and especially in recent memory.

Fair point. Considering that both companies had previously stated that they were planning to move towards a new platform that they would both participate in developing I get the feeling that the SHARES/Apollo decision will be a short-term solution.

Yes, it is better. But it is still limited and dysfunctional in some ways, more that co.com IMO.

bseller

While I wouldn't share your view entirely on whether or not UA is a dysfunctional airline, I believe you may have something there about "executing on loyalty". As a top tier elilte, I KNOW that my experience is better than the average traveling bear.


Dave

channa

I think you're right, but we can't be sure of that. There are more UA flyers, and more who are value conscious, so it's possible that more UA mistakes get caught/reported/etc.



I think the joint solution may be out the window at this point (at least temporarily). In the context of two separate companies, a joint platform made sense. Now they're going to be the same, so it becomes less of a concern.


I'm not sure about that. While ual.com has its quirks, for basic stuff like buying a ticket, I find it to be far simpler. For the basic user, one screen with all your info, and purchase your ticket, get a ticket number instantly, it's a lot cleaner.

I've found more bug-type items with CO (e.g., incorrectly quoting for an upgrade, or applying an e-cert then hanging in the ticket queue and not ticketing it).

I've found my ual.com frustrations being more around massaging the site to get the results I want vs. actual bugs or errors.

cerealmarketer

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

Example -In DL / NW it was the NW CTO who took over. But delta front end was used.

Site not popular and a step down grom the old NW one but in terms of operational problems like those US had with res shutting down it went smoothly.

channa

In the NW/DL scenario, they did recognize that nwa.com was superior to delta.com, and initially planned to use it. But the integration to the DL back-end system is what made the project more time consuming and costly, that they decided to just keep delta.com.

Another reason why I think the back-end system is going to be the driver here, and here's to hoping SHARES is out. The back-end functions are important in day-to-day transactions. The front-end stuff can be rebuilt.

Steph3n

I hope they change the backend to something more modern for both of them in the near future...but in the meantime I do think UA backend will be better suited.

As I said before in this thread, the site is a very small part of the IT function.
I find CO site better than UA in my limited experiences with the UA site, but some elements of the UA site are better (click on date of travel and calendar comes up, not having to click again, simple thing, but saves time, simple example)

The CO site is based around SHARES backend in many ways, but also has some functions around a more modern system, my hope is that they can adapt this to the UA systems and use the features that CO has unique right now (pda site transparency of lists, plane from/to features etc). If they can adapt their systems to pull the needed info from UA's it is simply a matter of parsing it to the public interfaces. Of course a simple matter may take months to execute.
UAs site/systems are as mentioned previously much better suited for the alacart/upsell systems than CO which has to be adapted for each new addon, and some which probably just would not happen with existing systems due to cost to implement in IT. This will weigh heavily on the choices going forward, no doubt.

HeathrowGuy

I'm not so sure of this. The joint solution - moving to the Star Alliance Common IT Platform hosted by Amadeus - would have conferred significant commercial benefits on both an intrinsic basis (to UA and CO) and extrinsic basis (in working with other Star partners). Given the deepening of the TATL joint venture, the growing importance of ancillary revenues, and soon-to-be expanded importance of United to the commercial offerings and value proposition of Star Alliance, I think an argument can be made that the merger may underscore, rather than forestall, the imperative to transition to the Common IT Platform.