FlyingNone

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But some people are just passive, they don't really care or think about it one way or the other until it's too late. In fact they would welcome a slower way of doing things -do less, get paid the same. I'm not saying that every agent has to be jumping up and down and ranting negatively about it, but for those of us who find it harder to dumb-down, it will be a real adjustment. I'm just thinking ahead. Maybe I'll be dead wrong on day-1 but.......??

I can easily point passengers to a kiosk or put them on a telephone to Reservations or call a Help desk myself but right now, I actually like the "hands-on" helping people, diving in and being useful and productive.
Buying an airline ticket is sometimes a lot more than just checking in. As you know there are all sorts of things that can go wrong or need correction -
Wrong dates booked, wrong names, credit card didn't clear, mplus number wrong or missing, fares wrong, changes, additions, subtraction of segments, fares, rules. This is before they get to the gate. Now at the gate there may need immediate handling of irrops, addition, subtraction of segments, change to other airlines, etc., etc. The concept is the same with all airlines but the tools are now different. Abilities and ease of doing and fixing is disparingly different FASTAIR versus SHARES.

Let me use this metaphor, if I may:
If I'm building a brick wall with a top-notch trowel and now you hand me a nail file to continue the job and take away my level, I'm gonna have a pretty messed up wall. I'm not saying "the sky is falling" or in this case the wall will fall or can't or won't be fixed but, initially, it will be a mess. I'll have to call the other guy who knows how to build the wall with a nail file but, wait !, he's on hold with a few others asking the same question so I might be directed to yet another person to help. OMG, don't let me look at that clock as it ticks away!

I'm quite sure CO/UA is aware of this, otherwise they wouldn't be beefing up the staffing at airports and their Help Desk. Keep in mind also, for those of us that work at airports that also have CO staff (luckily, I do), they will be working side-by-side with us so we will have quicker help. It will be harder for those that work at UAX or smaller stations with no CO presence. Honestly, it may not sound like it, but I'm trying to see the positive side and just go with the flow and not reluctantly buck it. I'll keep you posted !

channa

If an overlay were important to CO, why was it not put on last year? Two years ago? A decade ago?

Fastair is 10+ years old. Delta has been using Deltamatic for who knows how long, and even US has had their overlay on their SHARES for quite a while as well.

My point is if an overlay were a priority for CO, something would have been in place long before the merger.

In CO's defense, CO was smaller than the biggest carriers, and before they joined Star Alliance, they were not faced with as strict guidelines for passenger reaccommodation (e.g., in the past they could tell someone tough luck it's weather, we're not putting you on AA; now they have to if AA is the best option). So I can see why CO may not have prioritized this as highly.

Plus with CO's network (IAH and EWR as major hubs, CLE as a minor hub), reroutes during IRROPS aren't as common, so the CO mentality of blowing a connection and catching the next flight makes more sense than it does in the UA or the combined UA/CO network, where reroutes are more common (e.g., plane late? Offload and go another way).

sbm12

Why? Is there something inherently wrong with IDBs that somehow translates into the SHARES system being a fiasco?

LarkSFO

Are you being funny with this comment? 'Cause when I read it I laughed out loud!


Area where I agree with you most is irrops recovery and the pressure this will put on UA employees learning a new system.

As a point of reference, what % of flights on the UA network experience irrops on a weekly or monthly basis?

channa

The issue has nothing to do with learning a new system. The issue has to do with the level of effort required to perform the same tasks in the CO system.

A standard rebook with reroute takes 10x the amount of time to rebook someone on the CO system than on the UA system. It has nothing to do with proficiency or the system being new. It has to do with the amount of work required.

The problem is not learning curve, it's the system.


They're quite comparable now in terms of on-time performance (both UA and CO are at the bottom of the majors). Prior to the merger, UA was #1, and CO was usually in the middle. As for cancellations, CO seems to be running a bit higher than UA lately, though historically, UA is probably a bit higher on that one.

Though I'm not sure what this relates to. The issue is the impact on the agents and ultimate the customer that matters. When people are missing potential flight options as a result of long lines, or there's no way you'll be able to get on a flight leaving in 20 minutes because it'll take almost that long to rebook you, that's customer impact as a result of systems.

andrewwm

Me too, made me snort my coke that I was drinking!

Somehow CO has managed to fly pax around the globe (including at the notoriously congested EWR) for years just using SHARES without melting down on a daily/weekly/yearly basis.

Will the transition mean a few days/weeks of annoyances as UA personnel get up to speed? Likely yes, but it seems like UA has some measures in place to ease the problem.

Will it also mean a somewhat degraded IRROPs experience? Likely also yes, until FastShares comes on line.

Will it be a meltdown of epic proportions? Unless they screw something else up that is unrelated in the transition, I highly doubt it.

channa

I think most would agree that IDBs are a bad thing. I don't think the airline wants to involuntarily inconvenience customers. A VDB is a better win since the impacted customer agreed to the inconvenience.

Increased IDBs is just another potential consequence of the SHARES system. Alone it does not make the system a fiasco, but in addition to all the other challenges and limitations, it adds up.

halls120

Channa beat me to it. If CO's higher percentage of IDBs over VDB's is merely policy and not the outcome of an IT platform which makes it harder (timewise speaking) for a GA to process a VDB over IDB, then my comment about the statistic is misplaced. But if the statistic is being driven by the IT platform, we will be in for a bumpy ride.

Even if the new United had decided to go with the PMUA IT platform over the PMCO platform, I would imagine that there would still be issues upon integration. Different ones perhaps, but there would still be issues, which makes all the defensiveness among some posters very puzzling.

LarkSFO

OK, I understand your point. Disruption / Disaster will be the result of a new system that is slower / less user friendly than FASTAIR.

My point is: Even in your worst case scenario, normal operations will remain relatively normal. Where you think things are going to go completely sideways is when the new combined UA working on the SHARES platform has to deal with irrops, especially irrops on a large scale (which SHARES never had to accomodate before with CO's more limited route network and frequency).

I don't want to put words in your mouth... Is this an accurate characterization of your opinion?

I don't think anyone is saying that there will not be issues.

I think the disagreement is in the area of 'How alarmed should we be?' and 'How bad will it really be on March first (disruptions or disaster)?'

None of us know of course, but we'll all soon be finding out!

sbm12

Based on what? Are you saying that UA doesn't IDB specifically because of Apollo? If it is related to SHARES then why doesn't US IDB more often?

I'd love to see any evidence that CO has historically IDB'd customers because their GAs simply couldn't figure out how to do VDBs on the computers. Either way they've got a bunch of typing to do, right? So what's the difference whereby SHARES makes it easier for CO to IDB customers than to VDB them. The claim doesn't make much sense.

okrogius

It's hard to make an exact claim of reasons, but there are a few likely candidates that come to mind:
-auctioning of compensation (start with paltry 200 and increase once you have no takers)
-generally offer poor rebooking alternatives (UA is happy to rebook you on any airline of your choice even non-star in under a minute, whereas CO generally tries to stick to themselves even if several days later). You could argue this is both policy and systems (part of the reason CO doesn't like to rebook on other carriers does relate to the difficulty of doing it)
-terrible volunteer experience (whereas united will generally tell you whether you're needed as the plane starts boarding, co has no clue until everyone has boarded and overheads are full; electronic vdb list isn't used so you really have to hover around the GA even more)

While there are a few policy matters about this (e.g. auctioning), most of the reasons CO VDB process is abysmal compared to UA does somehow relate to their systems. But yes, this isn't causation (hence the "potential" in channa's post).

channa

But define normal. Even many of the basic tasks require several times more keystrokes and effort on SHARES than Fastair. IRROPS is just one of the better examples because there are usually a few steps involved (e.g., querying flights, selling flights, revalidating/reissuing tickets, checkin in).

There is lots of room for this to be a disaster given the type of system being used.

This is not a Windows 7 user going back to Windows XP where things are more or less the same, though in a different place.

This is a large group of people who have 10+ years experience designing webpages in DreamWeaver being told to do the same job with HTML codes in Notepad.

This magnitude of a downgrade is unreal, and frankly unheard of in work environments.


Agreed...we will all find out. My point is that we should be concerned, very concerned.

And no amount of attempted assuaging from the pro-CO crowd is going to pacify some legacy UA flyer who finds himself now a SHARES IRROPS victim who needs to get rebooked on DL, but since it took 20 minutes, now there's not enough time to make it, so they're stuck overnight in Denver.

I would really love to be wrong about all of this, but given what I've seen, and what I have been told nearly universally by a number of UA GAs -- to beware, not to fly on or around the transition time, and that CS levels will deteriorate simply because of the system, I'm worried.


US has a front end on their SHARES, so they're more efficient than CO with no front end.


No one's saying CO's GA's can't figure out how to do VDBs. But if the process is cumbersome (e.g., people who VDB electronically aren't considered because the SHARES list is difficult to use; or an OAL rebook may be so difficult for the GA they don't propose it, that very protection may have been what's needed to seal the deal in a tough volunteer situation), CO may be eliminating potential candidates creating a higher number of IDBs.



Thanks, beat me to it. It's not causation, but I'd be surprised if SHARES were not a contributing factor to CO's worst-in-the-industry IDB rate.

hobo13

I think the Egyptians wrote their HTML on a tablet.... with a chisel.

And they were still faster than I've seen some agents be able to off-load me and move me to another flight using SHARES!

FlyingNone

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Oh this is good !....I'll be quoting it on my first day of the training class (very soon). !!

SFOFastAir

Remember the web (i.e. continental.com) is only a user interface to the underlying reservation system backend (i.e. SHARES).