luv2ctheworld

+1 ^

That's the underlying reason why I stuck with Android OS, despite the sexiness of iPhones (sorry, I know, OT and an opinion )

andrewwm

I'm not saying the new website is the gold standard in terms of reliability (far from it), but it's a pretty clear improvement over the pmUA website in those terms.

* I can count on zero fingers the number of times I could get the change flight interface to work on the pmUA website
* I can also count on zero fingers the number of times I got the refund flight to work successfully on the old website (to be fair, I only tried it a half dozen times and then just called in figuring it wasn't worth the time trying online)
* Successfully sponsoring upgrades worked about 75% of the time, the other times I would get the dreaded call United red text.
* Multi-city search was incredibly frustrating on the pmUA website. Between the crummy javascript that they implemented it with that made it really slow and the fact that it was very unclear what was and wasn't allowed to be search for (basically it was really unclear what would cause a multi-city search to blow up or price strangely), it felt like I would waste hours doing what can be done with relative ease on the current website (which still has issues, granted)

It's not even that it was less fully functional than the current website, it was that it was apparently random when you'd get the dreaded red text and when you could do what the site promised it could do.

y2k1jetta

pmUA website was the best least complicated airline website at the time. Easy searches, pricing, sorting and less graphics. It was superior to anything today. One thing I truly miss about pmUA.

rmannion

In spite of Alex, I love the post-merger changes to the site. Yes, the design is hideous by today's standards, but I'm a huge fan of the improved search tools, especially the monthly calendar view and how information like connect times & mileage accrual is displayed. I fear that any future redesign will hide all that information in modals/popups or even slower AJAX modals in an attempt to appear sleek and simple.

AA_EXP09

Andrew, working through the GDS for ticket exchange works but is way worse (manual input of taxes, commission which is often 0 anyways, typing new are construction if applicable, and no change fee waiver as I have heard 'we would love to help you but your ticket is issued by a TA, work through them')

Sykes

Your GDS doesn't auto-price exchanges? Mine does ... and it makes it pretty much as quick as issuing a new ticket.

agarc

Blah blah blah. I was talking about branding and overall image. I didn't have time to compare functionality between AA and UA (I don't care, actually).

You also forgot to mention the famed "Ask Alex" feature. 2013 - now we're talkin'.

ryerflyer

I could care less how "dated" UA.com looks - it's functionality is far superior to AA's, and also far more functional and provides much more data that the old UA.bomb. Function over form, please.

xzh445

I find the whole "hatin' up on Alex" amusing in the posts above yours. It's a serach engine for the website, plain and simple. When the window pops up, there is a speaker icon with the words "Sound Off". that works fine, and oddly enough, my modern, ultra high tech, wizz bang PC has this fancy thing called a "mute" button. I suspect it has more to do with being a pmCO feature, than anything else, but let's not digress. The pop-up window displays the text, and offers links, for relevant website information. For those asking an Avatar for a date, or rude suggestions about the airline's CEO....well, enough said.

Agreed on the calendars. Both the AA and DL calendars are weak. To search for Dec 2013, you have to click in the date, and then have to click the arrow 11 times to get to Dec. I have noticed the same thing on several of the travelbooking sites as well. The UA calendar has a dropdown w/ month and year. Much faster

AA_EXP09

Contract fares...
What are you using?
I have experience with Galileo and Amadeus (the former is even worse IMO)

Sykes

Sabre ... it does a pretty good job of auto-pricing exchanges as long as both the original ticket and the new ticket would normally auto-price (even when it's a partial exchange). It handles contract fares pretty gracefully as well.

LEONIDES

The website has messed-up info on my MP account, again. It looks like they are doing another mass update of records, similar to what they were doing last spring.

If I look at the ACTIVITY SINCE LAST STATEMENT page, it has all the activity through Jan 12 through April 12, plus the activity for this month. It dropped all the activity of May through December of 2012. On this page, the current mileage balance is roughly 40K higher than my actual ending balance for 2012 - but I didn't fly 40K miles this month (not even close.) However, the balance shown on the UA page is a full 100K less than what is shown on ACTIVITY SINCE LAST STATEMENT page.

The good news is that they did finally credit me for an old Lufthansa flight I took last April. Maybe they are trying to clean up their old mistakes....

Just more weird, wacky fun that I have come to expect from this outfit.