Surprise! The US Air web site is not *really* US Air!

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Mike O'Dell" <mo () ccr org>
Date: August 27, 2006 6:28:05 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Surprise! The US Air web site is not *really* US Air!

Dave,

For the second time now I've come to grief booking tickets
on the US Air web site and then needing to change them.

The issue is that as a result of US Air's
merger with America West, the web site found at USAIR.COM
and labelled prominently (and only) as "US Air" is, in fact,
operated by America West. And at least in the world
of airline reservation ownership, US Air and America West
are still completely unrelated entities. This has
a huge implication:

        A ticket booked on the USAIR.COM web site is not
        really a US Air ticket in spite of flight numbers
        and the carrier indicated on boarding passes and
        ticket receipts; the reservation is owned by

                        >> *America West* <<

this means that if you need to change a ticket booked thusly,
the people you get calling the US Air contact numbers

        *cannot deal with it*

nor can they find someone who can.  Even more surprising,
the first time this happened I discovered that
the airport ticket counter agents cannot deal with it
either and tell you to go see America West!!

This is *seriously* brain-damaged.  When this first
happened to me several months ago I though, gee,
a transitional corporate integration problem. I've been
through those and decided to cut them some slack.  But
it's been over 3 months and it's *still* broken.

This morning's amusement was the US Air reservation
agent, honestly apologetic, telling me that she could not move
our three full-freight tickets from departing today to departing  
tomorrow
until after we "no-showed" for today's flight.  After that
I can call back and she thought they could do something
then. Or I could drive down to the airport and they
could deal with it there. (Uh, not based on my previous
experience!) If I do drive to the airport before flight time,
I won't get hit with a no-show fee.

How wonderfully gracious of them.

My personal conclusion is that this is hopelessly
broken and I will simply never use US Air's on-line reservations
system again, choosing instead to pay my usual travel agent who
prevents this kind of foolishness by booking with the "real"
reservation systems and who can deal with weather-driven
changes of plan as a matter of course.

There's a huge difference between "inexpensive" and "cheap".

Harumph.

        -mo

PS - insert snarky remark about "unsurprising airline bankruptcies"



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