In many of the other posts, people are indicaitng their problems -- but let's come up with a summary of what's wrong with these two Air Canada tools.

i.e. Website -- no multi-city routings
PTO - no award tickets

What else?

Here's an article from the Edmonton Journal today (I couldn't get a link to work):

Wednesday 11 July 2001

Air Canada promises faster, cheaper online service

David Finlayson, Journal Business Writer
The Edmonton Journal


Brian Gavriloff, The Journal / Barbara Hepburn uses a laptop computer to check out flights online at the International Airport.


Air Canada plans to offer discounts for online flight bookings and to make its Web site easier to navigate as it plays catch-up in the soaring Internet market.

At a time when more travellers are clicking a mouse to book their flights, online bookings account for only two to three per cent of Air Canada's business, compared to 35 per cent for rival WestJet.

Although Air Canada considers online booking important, it was put on the back burner following the amalgamation with Canadian Airlines, spokesperson Charlotte Wardell said.

"We are planning to revamp our Web site to make it more user friendly and we will be offering a discount for online booking, as well as other new features. We are confident we'll see much higher use of online booking in coming years."

The airline, which also gets another three per cent of its business through U.S. online travel agencies such as Travelocity, is hoping the changes will be in place by 2002, Wardell said.

The majority of Air Canada's bookings come from travel agents using the airline's computer reservation system -- something WestJet doesn't have -- and that accounts for much of the difference in online business, she added.

Even a small increase in the slice of the Internet pie can have a big impact on an airline's bottom line.

North American travellers will spend about $15 billion buying airline tickets on the Web this year, according to PhoCusWright, a U.S. consulting firm. That represents 14 per cent of total spending, compared with nine per cent last year.

Apart from catering to a consumer trend, airlines save millions of dollars in travel agency commissions and other costs through Web bookings. Every time someone goes to their sites just to see if a flight is on time or to redeem frequent-flyer points, airlines can avoid answering a phone call and the associated costs.

Even people reluctant to buy tickets online often use the Internet to research fares before calling, saving the airlines even more money.

Airlines lure customers to their Web sites by offering special weekly online fares, something WestJet (www.westjet.ca), Air Canada (www.aircanada.ca) and Canada 3000 (www.canada3000.ca) all do.

Air Canada has not decided what discount it will offer, but it's not likely to be as high as the extra 20 per cent that Delta Airlines offered for online bookings when it launched a fare sale in the U.S. recently. That was immediately matched by American and America West.

U.S. airlines are in a dogfight for customers in an economic slowdown and face increasing pressure from online travel agency giants Travelocity and Expedia.

WestJet, which offers a flat $5 discount for booking online, is so pleased with its Web business growth that it is revamping its site to add more features, such as e-mailing itineraries currently faxed to customers, spokesperson Siobhan Vinish said.

"It's really growing at the speed of light, and online bookings save us a lot of money. It costs us $12 to do a phone booking and 50 cents online. We are a ticketless airline, and that makes a difference, also."

The Web site has also allowed the airline, which does not have alliances with other carriers, to increase its business from overseas, Vinish said.

It's not that the Calgary-based airline is trying to push travel agents out of the loop, she said. In fact, WestJet boosts agents' commissions from seven to nine per cent for online bookings.

"Travel agents are very important to us. We want to continue to work very closely with them."

But the travel agencies, caught in the middle of the Internet revolution, are fighting back by offering their own online booking systems.

Customers can book their travel online at AMA (www.ama.ab.ca), for example, through a system called Travelpoint.

The advantage is that it pulls up all available flights to a destination, not just one airline, sale and marketing manager Andrew Hopkyns said. A travel counsellor is available to answer customer queries.

"We have taken advantage of the technology available, but we also develop a far greater relationship with our customers than the airlines. "Travel agencies are no longer in the business of just selling airline tickets. We're travel counsellors. And those who do it well will be the survivors."

US airlines have pumped an estimated $145 million into Orbitz, a new online travel agency that opened last month to great fanfare � and service glitches

I think the first thing you have to do is to separate the regular AC website from PTO. They are very different products. PTO has some very positive aspects, but a number of shortcomings. The AC site, with a couple of exceptions is execrable. There also some slight differences with the award booking site but I'll include those with the AC general site. Here is my list of pros and cons for both:

AC site:
Pro:
1.Booking class is shown when flights are listed
2."Shop for fares" gives flight combinations for cheapest fares

Sorry, can't think of any more.

Cons:
1.Lack of ability to request by booking class
2.No way to select any routes other than those AC listed ones.
3.No capacity for multi-segment selection
4.Seats are assigned with no ability to request (no seat maps)
5.When trying to select an award flight, the message saying that the flight combination is not available does not say which segment is not available. This means a trial and error hunt for availibilty.
6.Award reservations have to be confirmed by phone (is this still true?)
7.There is no way for Es or SEs to gain access to revenue inventory if W (for E) or D and W (for SE) are taken

PTO:
Pro:
1.Excellent real time seat maps
2.Ability to select any routings and airlines. Can even set preferences.
3.Multi-segment trips (up to 8)
4.Ability to save itineraries
5.Relatively simple interface with full selection of flights
6.Reasonable on finding lowest fares

Con:
1.No way to book (or even see) booking class
2.If you want to look at both J and Y seat maps you need to go through the "find" process again.
3.Inconvenient if you want to play with different itineraries e.g. if you change one flight that results in a < 30 cnx, you can't get the seat maps and have to change the other flights to fit. Same if you want to look at different dates. These restrictions should only be flagged at the point of making the reservations.
4.No access to award bookings with this system
5.System is not hooked in well to AC's regular booking engine (e.g. when trying to construct a > 8 segment R/T by creating two o/w itineraries, these cannot be merged automatically by an agent. They have to type in the second part manually).

I'm sure there are more in each of these sections, but that's all I have for now.

One thing that we should all remember though, is that the needs of the likes of FT members are quite different from the once a year vacation pax. We want maximum control of every aspect of the booking process and have the knowledge to make the best use of all the resources that are available. A person looking for a cheap flight for a summer vacation needs a very user friendly interface that provides information about flight availability and perhaps seat selection, but he or she doesn't care if it's L or V or Q class. It seems to me that AC should have two distinct products, one that caters to the uninitiated (a la Expedia or Travelocity) and one for the frequent traveller. I almost always start the booking process online, but then I'm forced to call to get more information. I'm sure AC could increase its online reservations massively by taking into account the travellers' needs.