Originally Posted by
jimrpa
I am not joking. I own both an iPhone and an iPad and find both to be very valuable devices.
Think about what you would primarily use an airline app for? You'd use it to view flight status, check in, check for flight updates, review itineraries, both current and upcoming, and potentially purchase tickets. Basically, all transactions that require communication back to "the mothership". About all you'd use the app for in an "offline" mode is reviewing cached flight schedules and possibly viewing static content like seatmaps.
Hence, the effort being spent to develop an iPhone app is stupid and wasted, especially in Delta's case. As I said, if Delta had a robust, functional, platform-cognizant and platform-agnostic website, they essentially wouldn't NEED an iPhone app or an iPad app. They could simply do a web clipping (which, to the end user would look exactly like an app).
Thanks for playing.
Jimrpa - I'm sorry to say this sort of thing is a common issue among big companies. They keep trying to add new tech window dressing on the front end while the core system rots using tech from the last century. My own company is the same way - they keep rolling out nice GUI but the back end is still an archaic DB2 mess orignially deployed in the 80's. DL appears hooked on this idea - witness the current website. Its all nice and new when you first go to dl.com and then as you go back a layer the old site is there and I think we know what's at the core of the smelly onion.