This weekend, Continental Airlines will cease to exist, as they merge their reservations system with that of United. They will no longer be”moving their tails for you” as their jingle went on the televisionback in the 70′s.  But if, say, you are booked on Continental to San Francisco for an important meeting mid-May, what do you do?

Actually, nothing, as United will convert all Continental tickets over to United. Your agent will give you an updated itinerary of all the new information, which will include the new United flight and confirmation number of the same flight you were originally booked on.  Prior to the change it was a code-shared flight, now it is one carrier, United, with only United flight numbers.

You’ve just been informed your meeting has changed to another city and date: now what happens? If you bought your ticket with your corporate agent, you do nothing but tell your agent what you need re-booked and it will be taken care of for you. If you bought your ticket online to save paying a service fee, well, you will need to call United directly (along with thousands of other people in the same predicament) and most likely face extended holding times. Remember, United is a worldwide carrier operating 24/7, and everyone willbe calling them post-change for something.

What is most important about this upcoming change is that United’s entire reservation system willbe shut down effective March 2nd at approximately 11:45pm Central time, andno one will be able to check in, book a flight, or check a schedule.  Solet me remind you now, HEADS UP,  if you are traveling on March 3rd, checkin by 11pm the day before.  Their entire system will be down for up to8 hours, so if you have an early flight and did not check in you will have tocheck in at the airport; and if its really early and before the reservationsystem becomes available, you will be standing in a long line to have an agentcheck you in manually for your flight. Highly NOT recommended!!!

By Debra Burman-Gisby