Last US Airways Flight Today & Reservation System Integration Tomorrow

US Airways that started its operations as an airmail company back in 1939 will have its last flight tonight US1939 from San Francisco to Philadelphia.

Starting from tomorrow all the airport facilities should be under the American Airlines brand and hopefully the carefully planned transition from Shares (system US Airways used) to Sabre (reservation system that AA founded) goes well.

You can read more about this transition on WSJ piece here of which below is an excerpt:

But there are no guarantees. Airline reservation systems enable all the steps customers take—buying tickets, changing seats, checking in, boarding and being reunited with their luggage. The software that runs check-in kiosks, gate readers, airline agents’ computers and flier apps all connects to the reservations system. “This is a wildly complex process,” Ms. Leibman said.

If problems arise, she said, the goal is to “triage and remediate as quickly as possible.”

To that end, American in recent months has hired 1,900 new airport and reservations agents. For the transition period, it raised airport staffing levels by more than 20%. It is deploying 350 technicians to airports, deputizing 500 employees to be responsible for their airports’ readiness and temporarily assigning American airport agents to US Airways hubs to assist.

The US Airways agents, who were accustomed to another reservations system, have been trained on a new check-in system that has been configured to look familiar but will be based on Sabre.

Conclusion

Let’s hope that everything goes smoothly tomorrow and the previous merger disasters (United/Continental and US Airways/America West) that caused headache for both fliers and employees won’t reoccur.