American Airlines Group Inc. set Oct. 17 as the date for the
complex task of migrating merger partner US Airways onto the
American Airlines reservation system.
This will be the combined company's largest IT integration
involving a system used by customers since the 2013 merger, and it
is a transition that hasn't gone well for some rivals in the
past.
Maya Leibman, American's chief information officer, said in a
media briefing that the world's largest airline by traffic has
taken several steps to mitigate the risk. They include hiring
additional airport and reservations agents, training US Airways
employees on American's system, doing tests with the company's
commuter airline partners and reducing the flight schedule around
the transition date.
To further smooth the process, Ms. Leibman said, American is
giving itself 90 days to transfer reservations made on US Airways
for Oct. 17 and beyond to American's flight code and system, so
that all those files won't have to be transferred in a single day.
The process will begin with an internal schedule change slated for
next weekend. This plan, called a "drain down," means that by Oct.
17 all the remaining US Airways reservations for travel after that
date will already have been transferred to the American system.
American already has aligned frequent-flier plans and done other
IT integration to bring the two units' revenue accounting, cargo
and other pricing functions together, she said. Over the next few
years, the Fort Worth, Texas, company will work on IT integration
for flight operations, pilot and flight attendant scheduling and
maintenance and engineering systems.
Postmerger United Continental Holdings Inc. in 2012 melded
separate frequent-flier programs, websites and passenger
reservations systems on a single day, the so-called "knife edge"
approach. It didn't go well, and for months afterward passengers
and employees struggled with the new functions. Since then, United
has been plagued by at least five other computer malfunctions, the
most recent of which caused it to ground its world-wide fleet for
two hours on Wednesday after a problem router prevented the company
from checking in passengers.
Asked about the latest United disruption, Ms. Leibman said she
was sympathetic. "This is not an experience any airline wants for
their customers or employees," she said. She also noted that "there
is no tech leader who can stand up with 100% certainty and say
nothing is going to happen to them."
By contrast, when Delta Air Lines Inc. moved merger partner
Northwest Airlines to its reservations system in 2010, the
transition was so smooth that few customers noticed. Delta only
announced it had occurred after the event.
Travelers who hold US Airways reservations for the next three
months don't need to take any action, American said. The company
plans to begin sending emails to its frequent fliers, explaining
how their benefits will be fully aligned once the reservations
system transition is complete. As the reservations for travel in
the autumn are migrated behind the scenes in the coming months,
passengers will receive notices that their future flights will bear
the AA code instead of the US code, American said.
On Oct. 17, the US Airways name will come down at airports,
check-in kiosks will be switched to the American applications and
the US Airways website will go dark. If the schedule holds, the
last two flights under the US Airways code should lift off late the
night before, one from San Francisco to Philadelphia, and the other
from Phoenix to Denver, the company said.
Write to Susan Carey at susan.carey@wsj.com
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