Skift Business Traveler: American and US Airways Reservation Integration Looms
Skift Take
What to Know Now
The process of combining the reservation systems of American Airlines and US Airways begins this Saturday and runs for 90 days. One of the largest components of the ongoing merger, it's also one of the most complicated -- so prepare for a rocky few weeks.
To the airline's credit, it's brought in nearly 2,000 employees and learned lessons from other carriers. But as with all IT problems, no transition is seamless. Few will speculate on the scale of the calamity in store (though general consensus is that it should be far smoother than the UA-CO merger) but the Skift Business Travel team will have updates from the field. We've got American flights on both Thursday and Sunday.
Social Quote of the Day
Every time I arrive into the UK I wonder what it would be like if we had a world class airport and border service.
Airlines
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Good Taste and High-Tech Make Swiss’ New Cabins a Haven for All Classes: Award-winning design firm PriestmanGoode, London, has revealed its designs for SWISS Airlines’ new high-tech cabins, bringing comfort and rich luxury to all, from the nose of the plane to the tail. Read more at Skift
Airports
What American Airports Can Learn From the Rest of the World: After Vice President Biden called out LaGuardia for being a third-world experience, it placed a media spotlight on what most regular business travelers already knew: the state of American airports is dire. Read more at Skift
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Tech
Reddit’s New CEO Is Also Hipmunk’s CTO, For Now: Reddit’s gain is Hipmunk’s half-loss — or that’s how the parties are spinning it. Read more at Skift
Is This the Airbnb of Car Rentals? Going peer-to-peer with your next car rental? Think about whether you want to have an alternative ready to go. Read more at Conde Nast Traveler
U.S. Senate Leader Pushing Bill to Weaken Rental Car and Rail Safety: A transportation bill introduced by a Senate committee chairman would allow car rental companies to rent recalled vehicles that haven’t been repaired and eliminate any hard deadline for railroads to start using long-sought technology that automatically stops trains to prevent crashes, safety advocates say. Read more at Skift
Hotels
What 8 Hotels in Cyprus Can Tell Us About Tourism’s Impact: Finding a destination suffering from the impacts of mass tourism doesn’t require a large-scale man-hunt, unfortunately. Read more at Skift
Another Chef Turns His Back on New Trump Hotel Project: Chef Geoffrey Zakarian is canceling plans for a restaurant in a new hotel being developed in Washington by real estate mogul and presidential candidate Donald Trump. Read more at Skift
InterContinental Continues Asset Sell Off With $938 Million Hong Kong Deal: InterContinental Hotels Group Plc agreed to sell the InterContinental Hong Kong to a group of investors advised and managed by Gaw Capital Partners for $938 million. Read more at Skift
Your Turn
Chris Elliott of elliott.org fame has a new website (and book)! Read more about How to be the World's Smartest Traveler here.
Tips and Comments
Can be sent to gm[at]skift[dot]com or to @grantkmartin
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