Goodbye Continental
Continental and United officially merge this weekend; let's hope everything goessmoothly
Continental and United Airlines are finally taking a final step to merge, originally announced in May 2010. Beginning Saturday, Continental will be no more. All Continental signs will be removed in over 370 airports around the world and its website will merge with United. (Go to united.com.)
The integration of the coumputer systems is the biggest worry. Continental's Shares system will merge all of its content with United's Apollo system starting around 1 a.m. Central Time on Saturday, and will shut down for around four hours. So far there have been four trial runs; the last one went smoothly. Extra staff will be on hand to smooth out any issues that may occur.
Travelers on flights this weekend have received the following email:
- Online check-in will be available until 1am U.S. Central Time on March 3. At that point, there will be a scheduled system outage lasting approximately 3-4 hours, and we will be unable to serve you online or over the phone during that time.
- If you are unable to print your boarding pass in advance, or if you have bags to check, please allow extra time at the airport. Additional staff will be available at the airport to assist you.
- Effective March 3, all flights that were scheduled to operate as Continental Airlines (CO) will be operating as United Airlines (UA). Be sure to check united.com or monitors at the airport for correct terminal and gate information.
- For more details, please visit us at unitedhub.com.
There has been issues in the past with similar "cut overs." When US Airways and America West merged, computers failed to connect with kiosks, which created long lines and delayed flights. But fingers crossed all will go well for the new United.