I (like so many in the Midwest) make an annual spring pilgrimage to Florida. The last 4 seasons I've flown respectively 1) Air Tran, 2) Allegiant, 3) Allegiant, and last year Frontier. I always treat myself to business, stretch, or exit row seating, assigned seating, priority boarding, etc. (always like to start vacation right).

Air Tran's web page is fairly easy to navigate for all expected functionality, of course one has to endure the endless upsell on Allegiant but eventually it gets the job done; Frontier's web page I found to be pretty dysfunctional; however I did speak to a couple res. agents at Frontier who I found to be friendly, efficient and issues were resolved quickly.

This year, I thought I'd give Delta a try; seemingly Delta has some attractive (A) and (P) pricing out of MSP. I used Delta.dumb and got slimed! I experienced the slow response times others have reported and anomalus rendering of graphics. Stil, I soldiered on and entered my information and credit card #, pressed the purchase key, I received the infamous "the fare you were quoted is no longer available prompt" and the fare jumped by several hundred dollars. Seriously? Absolutely pathetic IMO for a Fortune 500 company let alone any company. The web is the forward face of the company to the consumer.

I abandoned Delta as an option and used United.com to search for a trip. I was able to quickly search united.com for travel options and was able to complete my purchase quickly and add economy plus seating to my purchase.

I do have to wonder if other consumers are as turned off as I was with respect to Delta web. How much revenue is this slimy experience chasing away? Give that this is revenue maybe the Delta BoD should be asking questions of management; maybe some Delta VPs should be held accountable and metrics be established tied to bonuses.