United Continental Holdings, Inc. reports that it received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval for a single operating certificate, marking another significant achievement in the integration of United Airlines and Continental Airlines.The regulatory milestone, while significant from an operational policies and procedures perspective, does not change how customers interact with the airline.
Customers of United and Continental will continue to shop for flights, obtain seat assignments and check flight status on each carrier’s respective website until the company migrates to a single passenger service system in the first quarter of 2012. At that point, from a customer's perspective, the two carriers will function as one airline.
The two carriers went through a rigorous 18-month process of aligning operating policies and procedures to obtain a single operating certificate from the FAA, United said. Effective today, air traffic control communications will refer to all United and Continental flights as “United.”
United and Continental announced their merger in May 2010 and closed the transaction on October 1, 2010.
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