By the time US Airways Flight 1939 lands as a red-eye Saturday in Philadelphia, the airline will be no more. That’s the day when US Airways, which merged with American Airlines in 2013, officially begins flying under the American banner.
American is recommending its passengers arrive early this weekend just in case, but the airline is confident the transition will go smoothly because it has taken steps to minimize the impact on travelers.
“We’ve learned lessons from other airline integrations — it’s nice we are not the first to do it,” said spokeswoman Martha Thomas in an interview. “We’re not being cocky or overconfident, and we’re not letting our guard down. We know these things are tricky. But we’re doing everything we can to make this as seamless as possible for our customers.”
Starting Saturday, US Air’s website will forward to AA.com, the US Airways app will be disabled, and all US Airways records will be transferred to American’s Sabre reservations system.
The reservation system is essentially the brains of airline operations — it tracks all flights, passengers, baggage and other essentials — and history dictates there will be hiccups with the switchover.
An infamous example of that is the combination of United’s and Continental’s reservations systems in 2012, which resulted in a weeks-long fiasco with incorrect frequent-flier records, delayed flights and tied-up phone lines across the country.
Virgin America had issues in 2011 when it switched to the Sabre system. Then there’s Frontier’s switch from Sabre to Navitaire earlier this year, which resulted in hold times of 2.5 hours, lost baggage, missed flights and frustrated customers.
In preparation for its own transition, American has put about 50,000 employees through more than 1 million hours of training.
It has also increased the number of ticket agents, IT support staff, reservation agents and ramp staff at call centers and multiple airports, including at Denver International Airport, by about 20 percent this weekend.
American has 57 scheduled flights at DIA on Saturday, and 63 on Sunday, said airport spokeswoman Mindy Crane. The US Airways and American ticket counters are adjacent, as are the gates from which they operate on the A Concourse.
American is DIA’s fourth-largest carrier with 6.3 percent of market share as of August, the most recent statistics available. The top three are United, Southwest and Frontier.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
