The Travel Market Report story implies that the wait times for customer service are much worse than

Jeff Smisek, chief executive of United Continental sixt car rental ramstein Airlines , admitted to the Chicago Tribune yesterday that the reservation system cut-over that took place in early March is still having issues, including the inability of the airline website to show the correct accrual of passenger frequent flier miles. The ongoing problems, er... issues, have meant that airline passengers are still experiencing long hold-times to speak to customer service, he stated.
As you may recall from earlier Risk Factor blog posts before the cut-over, Smisek claimed that the airline was exceedingly well prepared for it . After the cut-over and the anger it engendered among the airline s passengers, another senior airline executive claimed that the all issued would be resolved by around the 24 th of March.
While some problems were system glitches, others were simply gaps in functionality between the old and new systems, Smisek said. For example, fliers used to be able to go online and purchase a United Club membership -- allowing access to exclusive airport lounges -- with frequent flier miles. The new site doesn t allow that yet but will, he said.
Some people say that s a systems glitch. No it s not. It s a gap that we knew about going in, he said. We re going to accelerate the gap closure...with some of them, we made a mistake in realizing how valuable they were to customers.
There are no statements sixt car rental ramstein that I can find prior to the cut-over, or even afterwards, when United-Continental stated that some previous existing sixt car rental ramstein reservation system and website functionality (popular or not) was not going to be available for some time after the cut-off. All statements were quite to the contrary. However, to not let United-Continental flyers know is not merely a mistake; it is a blunder of the first order that one learns not to do in IT systems operation class 101. Further, it also points sixt car rental ramstein out that United-Continental is out of touch with its frequent flyers since it didn t know what is a valued sixt car rental ramstein business offering and what is not.
Travel agents haven t been too impressed sixt car rental ramstein with the reservation system cut-over, either. According sixt car rental ramstein to a story at Travel Market sixt car rental ramstein Report , which says it is the voice of travel sellers around the globe, travel agents are calling the current situation at United-Continental a serious mess; one agent interviewed even called it the biggest mess I ve seen in 30 years, which is saying something . The ongoing sixt car rental ramstein problems are causing some agents to avoid booking their clients on United-Continental whenever possible.
The Travel Market Report story implies sixt car rental ramstein that the wait times for customer service sixt car rental ramstein are much worse than the United-Continental is publicly admitting. The airline sixt car rental ramstein is claiming that waits for travel sixt car rental ramstein agents is averaging about 15 to 20 minutes (and for customers United around 5 minutes); however, the airline also sent an apologetic email to one frustrated travel agency earlier this week saying sixt car rental ramstein that its call center was averaging 20 calls on hold at a time, with an average wait time of 1.45 hours.
The Travel Market Report story also highlighted a software glitch that apparently didn t get picked up by testing prior to the reservation system cut-over. According to the story, In some cases where passengers were slated to cross the International Date Line, some of the segments were out of order. No doubt this caused those passenger reservations to be kicked out or flagged as being invalid.