FA Mikey
Veteran
Imagine Lisa Smith's shock when she pulled up her frequent flier record on US Airways's website this week, clicked on a previous flight and found a Pennsylvania couple's reservations for an upcoming trip to Maui.
There it was in black and white: the couple's names, their confirmation and flight numbers for the June trip, seat assignments, and total ticket price -- $1,512.60. If Smith had wanted, she could change the seats or even cancel the trip. She could also e-mail the information to anyone.
''It was under my password and my screen name,'' said Smith, 42, a medical practice management consultant who lives in Fort Lauderdale. ``I thought someone had stolen my credit card number and booked a flight under my frequent flier number.''
That wasn't the case -- but it was far more complicated.
According to US Airways, it was a rare glitch in its massive merger with America West. Each carrier has had its own reservations system, its own six-character confirmation codes, and in this case, one of those codes was duplicated.
''Ever since we merged in May, this is the first time we've heard about this,'' said Allison Danziger, US Airways' director of e-commerce. 'As we heard, we all jumped and said, `We need to fix this.' We take these things very, very seriously.''
''We've got our entire development team, which is supposed to be working hard on migrating our systems, pulled off and working on this,'' Danziger said Friday. ``And they are hoping they will have a solution to make an emergency change tonight -- otherwise over the weekend or Monday.''
story here
There it was in black and white: the couple's names, their confirmation and flight numbers for the June trip, seat assignments, and total ticket price -- $1,512.60. If Smith had wanted, she could change the seats or even cancel the trip. She could also e-mail the information to anyone.
''It was under my password and my screen name,'' said Smith, 42, a medical practice management consultant who lives in Fort Lauderdale. ``I thought someone had stolen my credit card number and booked a flight under my frequent flier number.''
That wasn't the case -- but it was far more complicated.
According to US Airways, it was a rare glitch in its massive merger with America West. Each carrier has had its own reservations system, its own six-character confirmation codes, and in this case, one of those codes was duplicated.
''Ever since we merged in May, this is the first time we've heard about this,'' said Allison Danziger, US Airways' director of e-commerce. 'As we heard, we all jumped and said, `We need to fix this.' We take these things very, very seriously.''
''We've got our entire development team, which is supposed to be working hard on migrating our systems, pulled off and working on this,'' Danziger said Friday. ``And they are hoping they will have a solution to make an emergency change tonight -- otherwise over the weekend or Monday.''
story here
