The Final Steps Of American Airlines Transition Starts This Weekend

Up until now, the merger of American Airlines and US Airways has been remarkably smooth.  They set out to take things very slowly, so it’s not terribly surprising.  And, starting this weekend (July 18th, to be exact), American will start transitioning reservations made via US Airways to the American reservation system.

They’re working towards a completion date of October 17th to have all flights on one reservation system.

For now, the only thing you specifically have to keep an eye out for is if you have a reservation that you booked through US Airways for travel on or after October 17th.  You’ll receive an e-mail from American in the next couple of weeks with a new record locator issued by American.

It’s still important to keep an eye on things.  Even though I check my reservations frequently, you can see my own reminder to feed and water reservations on a regular basis.

There are a few items that we’ll be waiting for on October 17th, including:

• No more issues with codeshare flights in terms of upgrades and stand-by issues.
• The ability to waitlist for systemwide upgrades on US Airways flights using SWUs.
• Auto-requested upgrades for Executive Platinum members.  No need to remember to check the box or double-check when an AAgent updates a reservation.
• One list for domestic upgrade processing.  No need to check-in at the 24 hour mark to seek out a complimentary domestic upgrade “first come, first served”.

The transition of the reservations system is arguably the trickiest part of the merger.  This step in the United Airlines/Continental merger literally caused them to ground the fleet amidst widespread technology issues (something that still occurs randomly these days).  It’s sad to say that American can perform at such a high level throughout the entire merger process and, with one misstep in the reservations system transition, be lumped in with United in our collective history.

I’ll hope for that not to happen, and not just because I’m a big AA fan.  I’m optimistic that the next few months will be smooth ones.