The complex integration of two major US-based air carriers took a substantial step forward over the weekend.
A few hours after midnight Saturday morning, the technology used to process customers at the airline formerly known as Continental became the primary computer program for critical airport, reservation and operational tasks at the newly-merged airline behemoth now called United Airlines.
There were two areas of concern in the run-up to implementation of the single customer service technology at a corporation that now has 87-thousand employees working 5600 flights a day in 370 cities world-wide.
(1). Would the massive amount of booking data and operational information stored in the existing software (known as Apollo) used before Saturday by the pre-merger United employees meld properly into an old, somewhat clunky but reliable program referred to as Shares?
And…
(2). If implementation of Shares across the now mostly-merged system worked when the company pressed the button Saturday morning, would United employees accustomed to Apollo adapt to what can look like a foreign and archaic computer code? Would they successfully execute entries with customers standing right there in front of them?
While it’s too early to assess whether human use of the technology at a company so large has been spot on right off the bat, it’s at least safe to say the lights came on when the switch was flipped. The changeover worked. Reservations were retained. Data moved. The airline never stopped running. There wasn’t much chaos. There were a few hiccups but nothing like what was feared.
The big boss of the combined airline Jeff Smisek issued a memo to employees Monday deeming the move to a single customer service software a success. Smisek called it the “single largest technology conversion in aviation history.”
Inside the company, there was nervousness in the days and weeks leading up to the computer program change. Employees themselves were advised against flying on their own airline over the weekend in anticipation of possible problems handling paying customers. If felt much like Y-2-K.
All but a handful of the thousands of scheduled flights have operated since Saturday morning and 75-percent of them were on time over the weekend.
From a business standpoint, the single software streamlining the old United and old Continental’s flight passenger processing modes finally makes it possible to act as one entity. It’s only now that the public will see just one company. United. Customers will see just one website. They will have just one mileage program.
Employees still have union issues to sort out. There will continue to be some segregation of labor. Old United employees wear different uniforms than old Continental employees but the only significant corporate line dividing old and new has been erased.
From where I sit, the feat accomplished this past weekend makes this mega-merger begin to feel much more real.
-Rangers fans dreaming of a Cup can rest easy now that the trade deadline has passed. The remarkable chemistry on that team was nearly upended last week when Rangers GM Glen Sather came close to obtaining Columbus sniper Rick Nash. The Post’s Larry Brooks says Sather offered the Blue Jackets a package of Brandon Dubinsky, Tim Erixon, JT Miller, Christian Thomas and the team’s 2012 first round draft pick. Dubinsky has been stuck in a deep rut much of this season, but he’s a total glue guy. He’s super physical and the perfect kind of player to help hold together a long postseason march. The other young players offered by Slats are all top picks on the brink of possible pro breakouts. Nash is 27 and he’s a great goal scorer but he’s in the second year of an eight-year, $62.4 million deal. His 7.8 mil annual cap hit would have put a serious crimp on retention of a crowded pool of great young talent on the Rangers. As it turned out, Columbus GM Scott Howson set Nash‘s trade value way too high. Brooks says Howson demanded Dubinsky and either Ryan McDonagh or Michael Del Zotto PLUS either Derek Stepan or Carl Hagelin PLUS Chris Kreider PLUS the 2012 first round pick. That’s nuts. Kreider is said to be a possible superstar and could see Garden ice this spring. The Rangers have plenty of goal scorers on most nights and are starting to see sniper-like stuff from Marian Gaborik. Sather was nuts for making a substantial offer for Nash. It’s lucky from the Rangers’ perspective that Howson was even more nuts.