UA Network Outage Underscores Travel Agent Value
by Maria Lenhart and Andrew Sheivachman - August 30, 2012
United’s major network outage that shut down its reservations system and website on Tuesday, Aug 28, 2012 pointed up the advantage for consumers to work with travel agents. Most agents contacted by Travel Market Report said they experienced little or no business disruptions during the outage, many were called on to assist clients caught up in the mess – and were able to help navigate them through it.
580 delays, paper boarding passes
United’s computer glitch grounded airplanes for more than two hours, caused 580 delays, nine cancellations and rendered the carrier’s website inaccessible. In addition, GDS companies said that they did not have access to real-time inventory during the outage. United said its operations were running normally on the following day. The carrier said the outage was caused when a piece of communications equipment in one of its data centers failed and disabled communications with its airport stations and website. "We have fully redundant systems, and we are working with the manufacturers to determine why the backup equipment did not work as it was supposed to," a United spokesman said in an e-mail. Although the outage affected reservations and departure control issues – the carrier had to issue manual boarding passes and baggage tags.
Need for the travel agent
Situations such as what occurred on Tuesday demonstrate the relevance of travel agents, according to Garria.
"Truthfully, we have clients who say if it wasn’t for you guys, we’d be lost," she said. "They tell their buddies who book online, ‘try to get someone on the phone to help you or back you.’ I had a client with three transfers yesterday, and I had her backed up- if you go online, this is not going to happen. Travel agencies are still needed."
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