For you experts out there, why are they ticketing it to 'Continental" and not united, if CO is long gone?? (That is the reason the United it changing the confirmation number to a united number)
It's not a CO reservation number, per se. It's an Amadeus number, which UA.com recognizes, but also recognizes it as not a UA number.
Anyway here's where is may get interesting. I'm not going to try and speculate how many were booked, but the question Ergel posed upthread was if WF could eat it. I was wondering the same, but IMO since the etickets show the "error" price that means that UA accepted that price from WF and - as of now - that is all WF will have to pay UA.
The glitch probably occurred because WF didn't have UA YQ loaded into their system. TAs used to be able to (and probably to an extent still can) dump any YQ by ticketing with a carrier that didn't have YQ loaded. Before DOT regs what usually happened was the pax had to pay the YQ at check-in (if they chapped). After the DOT regs the agency got a ADM for the YQ plus a nice penalty.
So now it would seem that the onus lies on
UA. Who do they charge. They cannot charge the pax thanks to DOT, they can only charge the "booking agent" in this case WF. If WF cannot pay up, well that stays between UA and WF to be fought out in IATA or courts. But I see no way of UA - or WF - getting out of these tickets. Remember, the LY glitch wasn't LYs fault, but they still had to honor it. This is the same this. I don't see how UA gets out of honoring these. If they get their money from WF, well that's their problem.
Just goes to serve these airlines right for playing with YQ. Airlines originally started that game so they could fudge the numbers in marketing. Once that became illegal in the US (still legal in Israel, btw. Stay far away from crooks who take advantage), it became irrelevant for most airlines, but UA still uses it to their advantage to rip off TAs. They only pay comms on "base" fare, not YQ. For example I ticketed a family of 7 on UA, tickets were $1000 a piece, but base fare was $300. Comms were 3% of base, so on $7000 of tickets total commissions were $63. So everytime UA gets burned for playing these games, a part of me smiles