Why was my reservation split?
 

My wife and I are on a trip EWR-FLL this weekend. I am a lowly silver, she has no status. I was silver when I booked about a month ago; we had coach seats EWR-FLL and I upgraded us both with miles for the return FLL-EWR.

On line check in on 2/6 was normal. When I clicked on my check-in reminder today for our 2/8 flight, I noticed that only my name was present. Fearing my wife had no seat, I logged into continental.com to discover my wife is still sitting next to me, but our reservations were split. She has the original reservation confirmation, mine is listed has having been created on 2/5.

Why would this have happened? I know sometimes elites split themselves on request to get a better shot at an upgrade, but I had the upgrade with miles at the time of booking and I made no request. My fear at this point is that if seats get shuffled around we might not be sitting together on separate reservations. I called the reservation line but the woman I spoke to told me there was no information available as to why the split happened.

Is there any danger in using the "combine" functionality on the website?

Do your flight depart on the 6 or 7?

2/6 EWR - FLL
2/8 FLL - EWR

My separated reservation is indicated as having been created on 2/5, but my online check in on 2/5 showed us both on the same reservation..so the split must have happened just after my online check in (I did it at ~9:00 pm on 2/5)

I am a CO Employee and I can tell you:

Your PNR (or reservation) could have been split when making the changes to upgrade to first. Also in the future anytime any standby or wait listing is done the PNR also needs to be split.

***HINT HINT - This is also a reason why SOMETIMES (not always) Elites are not properly sorted on the upgrade list***

-- It's nothing personal to do with you....CO's Reservations system is SO OLD...It's all "format based" (similar to DOS for you computer people)...No Pictures or nuttin.

From what I've learned the "combine feature" doesn't merge the confirmation #s..It's only there for "show" on the website. Once a PNR is split or "divided" it cannot be put back together.

But I upgraded to 1st using miles at the time of reservation over a month before the 1st flight and my checkin for the 1st flight was normal.

At checkin for the outbound, it should have asked you if you'd like to upgrade to first class.

If you answered yes, your record would be split.