New Reservation System Causes Delays for United

United Airlines

United Airlines battled service problems including flight delays, faulty kiosks and jammed phone lines this weekend as it worked through technical problems in its efforts to combine the United and Continental Airlines reservation systems.

The airline on Saturday adopted the reservation platform of the former Continental Airlines after the companies merged to form the world’s largest carrier, now known as United Airlines. It is owned by United Continental Holdings.

But after spending months preparing for the change, including training about 15,000 employees on the new software, United said on Sunday that technical issues had flared up at airports across the system, causing delays.

In particular, problems with airport check-in kiosks meant customers instead had to line up to see service agents, Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman, said.

“We did have some issues with our kiosks, and at times that slowed the check-in process,” Ms. McCarthy said, adding that the airline’s performance had improved by Sunday afternoon.

By 3:30 p.m., 83.1 percent of domestic mainline flights were arriving on time, in line with the company’s 80 percent monthly goal, Ms. McCarthy said.

Earlier on Sunday, only 75.5 percent of United’s mainline flights were on time — arriving within 14 minutes of their scheduled slot — as were about 87.1 percent of its Express flights. On Saturday, 75 percent of flights were departing within 30 minutes of their scheduled time.

The company’s Web site said that its call centers were “currently experiencing extraordinarily high call volumes” and that in some cases, hold times were more than an hour. Customers might be advised to call back another time, it said.

Other issues that irked some customers included a delay in the merging of the airlines’ air-miles programs. The airline said it had put up a notice on Saturday morning saying air miles could take up to 72 hours to be updated.

Michael Boyd, an airline consultant at Boyd Group International in Evergreen, Colo., said his wife was waiting for her air miles to be transferred but added that two of his colleagues had traveled through United without incident on Sunday.

“It doesn’t look like it’s a major meltdown; it looks like a glitch,” said Mr. Boyd, who added that he had not done consulting work with United and was not working with any of its competitors.

Mr. Boyd said that arrival times seemed normal but added that kiosk problems could make travelers anxious, particularly because airlines tended to have many fewer counters open and relied more on kiosks.

Migration to a single reservation system comes with risks, as the US Airways Group learned in 2007 when it tried to combine the reservation systems of the former America West Airlines and US Airways. The two airlines merged in 2005.

A flaw in combining those systems caused self-service kiosks to fail and forced passengers to stand in extraordinarily long lines.

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