I had one of the persons working on the conversion tell me in February that they had run 16000 test scripts testing the new system. She then admitted that they hadn't been able to run their test on the final system as it was still being worked on. Before SABRE conversion, over 150,000 test scripts were run after the system was frozen for production. After the bugs were fixed, the scripts were run again, this time at airport location over night testing, testing, testing. When SABRE started, it ran as advertised. Training and experience building, that was another story.
Most of the problems now being experienced are related to the actual conversion, PNR, ETKT disassociation, PNR errors, ETKT errors, ETKT controled by OA. Code Share errors. Those should have been caught and corrected in testing before conversion. I believe most East Coast agents could be "making it work" without those problems.
This is actually secondary to the major problem, the kisoks. When they work, they have the same problems as the agents, ETKT/PNR not correct. And they don't work very often. Some times they like to print boarding passes and bag tags for the 1st segment only for awhile. Then they work on some passengers correctly and sometimes not. All of this should have been caught in testing.
Seems to be the HP way, install and fix afterward. Well after a week and it ain't fixed, the BOD should be meeting and looking for a solution (new leaders), they may not have an airline to be a director of if this continues. I believe the millons of dollars lost and passenger confidence lost would have paid for SABRE for many years. While US may be able to lure passengers back with low prices, the passengers who make the difference will be much harder to get back and cost a lot of time and money to try and get them back.
For those who say that CO is successful using Shares, the thought comes to mind as to how much more successful they would be with a top notch system. They don't know what they don't have and can't do.
