By Debra Burman-Gisby Over this weekend Continental Airlines will cease to exist, as they merge their reservations system with that of United. They will no longer be "moving their tails for you" as their jingle went on the television back in the 70's. But if, say, you are booked on Continental to San Francisco for an important meeting mid-May, what do you do?
Actually, nothing, as
United will convert all Continental tickets over to United. Your agent will give you an updated itinerary of all the new information, which will
include the new United flight and confirmation number of the same flight you
were originally booked on. Prior to the change it was a code-shared
flight, now it is one carrier, United, with only United flight numbers.
You've just been
informed your meeting has changed to another city and date: now what happens? If you bought your ticket with your corporate agent, you do nothing but
tell your agent what you need re-booked and it will be taken care of for you. If you bought your ticket online to save paying a service fee,
well, you will need to call United directly (along with thousands of other
people in the same predicament) and most likely face extended holding times.
Remember, United is a worldwide carrier operating 24/7, and everyone will
be calling them post-change for something.
What is most important
about this upcoming change is that United's entire reservation system will
be shut down effective March 2nd at approximately 11:45pm Central time, and
no one will be able to check in, book a flight, or check a schedule. So
let me remind you now, HEADS UP, if you are traveling on March 3rd, check
in by 11pm the day before. Their entire system will be down for up to
8 hours, so if you have an early flight and did not check in you will have to
check in at the airport; and if its really early and before the reservation
system becomes available, you will be standing in a long line to have an agent
check you in manually for your flight. Highly NOT recommended!!!
Debra Burman-Gisby is a Corporate Travel Agent based in our Deerfield, Illinois office.
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