American’s new post-merger look on a 787-800. (American Airlines)
American Airlines combines its reservation system completely with US Airways’ on Saturday. And despite plenty of proactive planning on the airline’s part, travelers flying this weekend will want to arrive early.
American and USAir merged in 2013, and the USAir brand has slowly been phased out. The switch of the reservation system — which tracks all flights, passengers, baggage and other essentials — will happen behind the scenes, but if past experience serves as example, there will be hiccups felt by travelers. Remember ? That led to a rash of incorrect frequent-flyer records, delayed flights and tied-up phone lines across the country. Virgin America ran into similar issues in 2011 when it switched to the Sabre system, and who could forget earlier this year, which resulted in hold times of 2.5 hours, lost baggage, missed flights and plenty of frustrated customers.
The to ensure the transition goes as smoothly as possible, including running full-scale system tests with 5 million mock reservations and early migration of many US Airways reservations.
The airline also reportedly has decreased flight load and increased airport staffing, per the Tribune. Calls to the airline to learn more about how this will impact DEN have not yet been returned.
, fourth behind United, Southwest and Denver-based Frontier.
