Newman Posted December 14, 2019 Share Posted December 14, 2019 On 12/5/2019 at 12:53 PM, Jaydee said: An update.... . Airline of the year Sure doesn’t say a lot about the competition. I literally just finished up with an agent. (It was a change that could not be done on-line as it required human input to complete....this was also a full fare ticket I had purchased.) New system = progress ?? I beg to differ. At least the opening message today didn’t give me the middle finger and hang up on a potential customer basically saying ....up yours...your business is not important....we don’t want to talk to you.....Bye Bye...clink !! Today at least they answered...more or less.. It took 1 hr 48 minutes on hold for someone to finally answer, then another 1 hr 03 mins to process a flight change using the “new” res system.It was quite obvious that none to very little Time and money had been spent on training staff as my agent was doing the best she could but it was very apparent she was learning on the go. Using my example, with breaks etc, she MIGHT deal with 6 people in an 8 hour shift. I tip my hat to her for maintaining her cool as I would expect she gets a few nasty replies from people with all these delays. I wonder how many clients switched to WJ forever this past week simply out of total frustration. WestJet suffered through this during the switch to Sabre back in 2009. It was so bad they eventually contacted a temporary call center in India for help dealing with the calls. WestJet survived. AC should be in good shape. One of the key players in the WestJet debacle is now the CIO at Air Canada and she brought along some help! I’m sure they have great notes on what to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airband Posted December 14, 2019 Share Posted December 14, 2019 A month from now when things are running more smoothly it won't be because the agents got any smarter or received more training or the system got tweaked, .Systems training has an ugly step-sister called familiarization that few want to deal with, acknowledge or fund during the planning process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 Lots of press re how bad this is but .... are flights leaving confirmed passengers behind or ????? or are we seeing the usual dissatisfaction with it's not perfect and it should be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seeker Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 On 12/14/2019 at 8:34 PM, Marshall said: Lots of press re how bad this is but .... are flights leaving confirmed passengers behind or ????? or are we seeing the usual dissatisfaction with it's not perfect and it should be? The operational effects of the switch are minimal (IMO). Of course the press is playing up any complaint they find from their ready cadre of AC-haters - after all, how many clicks can you get on a headline that reads; Switch to New Res System goes Fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AIP Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 54 minutes ago, seeker said: The operational effects of the switch are minimal (IMO). Of course the press is playing up any complaint they find from their ready cadre of AC-haters - after all, how many clicks can you get on a headline that reads; Switch to New Res System goes Fine. Most of which is lead by the CBC . . . . . . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airband Posted December 20, 2019 Share Posted December 20, 2019 Until it gets bumped by something else... Quote A two-hour flight from B.C. to Yukon turned into a frustrating two-day international tour for dozens of passengers this week. Air Canada's 88 passengers began their journey late Monday night, flying out of Vancouver. They were headed for Whitehorse, but ended up in Anchorage, Alaska, for a night, and then were flown back to Vancouver for another night. Some of the passengers finally arrived in Whitehorse early Wednesday afternoon — more than 36 hours late. Others were expected to arrive on a later flight on Wednesday. "This is an inconvenience, but nobody has been out in the cold," said Thea Rogers on Tuesday evening from Anchorage. She was one of the passengers trying to get home to Whitehorse. "My one criticism is the lack of communication with Air Canada — you know, we just didn't have a clue what was going on." 2-hour Air Canada flight to Yukon becomes 2-day international journey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 20, 2019 Share Posted December 20, 2019 29 minutes ago, Airband said: Until it gets bumped by something else... 2-hour Air Canada flight to Yukon becomes 2-day international journey can you imagine the headline if the flight had landed (that is at temped to) and had to evacuate or worse? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boestar Posted December 23, 2019 Share Posted December 23, 2019 I had to call Reservations the other day and didn't even get the option to hold. Just that there are too many calls and a new system, go online. It is busier than normal for certain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lakelad Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 . Air Canada's new reservation system has been plagued with problems — and may not be fixed for months Many customers have been unable to change their reservations or redeem their points and are waiting hours to speak to agents for help Tue Jan 21, 2020 - Financial Post Martin Patriquin Problems with Air Canada’s reservation system, which have frustrated myriad customers of the airline, may not be fixed until May, The Logic has learned. The airline rolled out its new Passenger Service System (PSS) in November 2019, just before the holiday travel season. Designed by Spanish firm Amadeus, it was meant to streamline Air Canada’s reservation process, allow the airline to communicate with the systems of its partner airlines in the Star Alliance group and otherwise improve the travel experience of its more than 50 million passengers annually. Yet the system, known as Altéa, has been beset by problems, including the inability to change bookings and redeem Aeroplan points online. The airline’s call centres have been overloaded as a result, with some passengers waiting up to six hours to speak with an agent. There have been nearly 2,200 complaints lodged against the Montreal-based carrier since the establishment of the Air Passenger Protection Regulations in July. When asked about the problems with the reservation system at a Montreal press event last week, CEO Calin Rovinescu walked away from reporters. Air Canada has promised to fix the problems as quickly as possible. But according to correspondence from a senior airline source, obtained by The Logic, doing so will take several months. The problem, reads the email, is the massive switchover from Res III, the decades-old legacy system the airline had been using. The change required system training for over 7,000 of Air Canada’s roughly 30,000 personnel, according to the company’s 2018 annual report. Though Altéa was meant to replace Res III in the manner of a “heart and lung transplant,” as Rovinescu put it in a memo last summer, the system today remains a pastiche of old and new. The company said the glitches haven’t affected flight operations. “We have added staffing, revised processes and taken other technical steps to better serve customers, and we thank our customers for their patience. We have not provided a timeline,” said Pascale Dery, Air Canada’s media relations director for Quebec and Eastern Canada, in a statement to The Logic. According to an August memo obtained by travel site The Beat, the transition to Altéa was to happen in three steps, of which the first — transferring more than three million passenger records to the new system — was scheduled for Nov. 18, 2019. After that, the company planned to change over its airport control systems, airport by airport, and fine-tune its direct booking system and the system that connects it with industry service providers like travel agents. “The importance and benefits of this two-year project cannot be overstated, neither can its complexity to implement,” said Rovinescu during Air Canada’s third-quarter results call last October. Once implemented, the new system was expected to provide the company $100 million annually in incremental benefits. Air Canada was at first reluctant to adopt the Amadeus platform to replace Res III. In 2013, Keith Wallis, at the time the company’s business development manager, said Amadeus’s offerings, as well as those of competitor Sabre, weren’t sufficiently flexible for the airline’s needs. The airline changed its tune by 2017, when it announced the partnership with Amadeus in what one Air Canada executive called “the evolution of what has been a long, successful and strategic partnership.” The Spanish company controlled 45 per cent of the global PSS market as of 2017. Yet its North American expansion hasn’t been without its kinks. Southwest Airlines, which began rolling out its US$500-million upgrade to Altéa in 2014, experienced similar technical issues with the product. Amadeus did not respond to a request for comment before deadline. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
conehead Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 Reminds me of the Phoenix pay system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boestar Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 People really do not understand the complexities involved in migrating from a legacy system to a new system like this. Older legacy systems are based on older and different standards, some of which have not been used in decades. Now try integrating that with dozens of other systems across the company. I am actually surprised it went as well as it did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
conehead Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 People do not need to understand how it works, nor should they need to. They simply expect it to work. It’s part of the product that Air Canada is selling to the public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boestar Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 You can believe that AC expected it to work as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tango Foxtrot Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 It is obviously "Boeing's fault " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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