That doesn't work when your prefered username is already taken. In those cases if just causes more problems.

That's precisely the problem. I started out my internet life with a "preferred" common login name. But as my sites multiplied, it was already taken . . . and my 2nd version of it was already taken . . . so I have out 5 different versions, never really sure which matches which site.

Don't they give us unique program numbers for a reason? Just use that as the login.

I think the reason is so that every time I want to log on to an airline site, I first have to go to Expedia, log on there, retrieve my profile and look up my FF number for whatever program I'm trying to access.

Unlike my banks, credit card companies, stock brokers, online shopping sites, FlyerTalk, etc...

I guess it just comes down to a matter of personal preference and practice.

My ff and stay numbers are burned into my brain, all memorized. My usernames, not so much -- those are the ones I would have to go to some file somewhere to look up.

- The ability to book partner awards online.

I recently had to book a *A award to PNH, but because UA does not fly to PNH (but TG does), I had to call UA to book and pay the $15 fee! :mad: I flew UA to BKK and TG from BKK to PNH only, but because I had to call, I had to pay! :mad:

And the only choice given was to fly UA to BKK.

- All available awards (including partners) for a set range of days (1 to 2 weeks either way)

- Route map easily found.

- The ability to chose award flights each way - even F O/W and Y on the return. (CO allows this and I've found a F flight out and a Y return for less than Y both ways - 2 saver flights vs a standard Y award! :cool: )

The ID could work either way -- America West allows you to log in with either your FF number or personal ID.

I get around the multiple IDs by using a prefix followed by a site ID. So I might have prefixhp for America West, prefixdl for Delta, etc. These combos are unlikely to be taken, unless you hit a prefix someone else has already chosen and they're using the same system.

Creating new website
 

1. Some airline websites make it very difficult or almost impossible to see their route maps. Some make you go through many non-obvios links. I especially like the interactive route maps. I'm not sure but I think that Air Tran has one.
2. I would like to find availability of partner airlines. Let us say I start on Delta. I might have a very long layover to connect to the last leg but Continental might have one leaving much sooner.

international flights for award ticket, especially for partner awards

-I have to say one of the most irritating things for me is searching for mile earning and burning promotions. Sometimes it's under Special Offers, but sometimes that only means discount offers, not mile promos; sometimes it's under How To Earn Miles, or Earning Miles, or Promotions, or Deals, and sometimes its only in the Newsletters, which can take forever to load. There is a difference between explaining how the program lets you earn miles, and the bonus mile offers. Make it obvious where the FF prog mile promos are.
-I don't like it when all the offers are all mixed in together- 20% off fare deals mixed in with the miles earning promos. I want to be able to find ALL the current promotions for earning miles and see them at once, and then be able to see all the cheap fare or hotel offers at once on another page. Some people are going to be looking for the cheapest fare, while some are concerned only with the bonus miles they can earn, or the best award redemption deals.
Some good sites that do this are CO (one of the best, IMO), Cathay Asia Miles, and Midwest. Also- Aeromexico has this type of page setup, however, they only have it for their Spanish site, not English too. So if I want to understand all the details, I have to copy and paste each promo into a translation site, which often ends up lacking in the translation anyway.
- Show me a list of ALL partners at one time. I don't want to have to search in 16 different links to find who all the partners are.
-Another pet peeve? When I can't find all the details and rules for the promotion... some programs leave off expiration dates, or don't tell you exactly what link to find the terms at, etc. Give me all the info about the promo at once, a la NW or United.
- Also, one of the coolest and most unique pages is one I came across on SPG:
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/prefer...tive_grid.html
Makes it nice and easy to compare all the details between programs at once. Use FACTS for things like this, not exaggerated claims, however!! Trust me, FT'ers will see right through "creative wording" and omissions.

-ditto on the crappy calendar pop-ups. half the time they take 5 minutes to load anyway, so i've typed in the date manually already.
-ditto on the advanced flight/fare searches. If i find that searches on your site will give me more info and CHOICES about the ticket, fare, class, etc. and i find fares that will be cheaper and not hide the fees/taxes until after purchase, I'll come back over and over again.
-ditto on the dream map/searches... where can i go for $150 or 15,000 miles....EXCELLENT idea!! Often i'll take a trip I hadn't planned on. But make sure that this will show ALL possibilities, not just 2 or 3 "featured destinations".

Hope this helps!

Airline Web Sites
 

The web sites don't permit you to select alternate routes if the cheapest fares are sold out or the frequent flier mile tickets are no longer available on one of the legs on the "shortest" routing. Example: You want to go from Miami to Ellay. You don't have the opportunity to choose to change in St. Louis instead of Atlanta, with or without using a partner airline for one of the legs. You have to call up and pay the fee for using one of their telephone agents.
It is also hard to use open jaw tickets. EG Fly to LAX and return from Burbank.

Airline Web UI
 

- Always allow viewing and changing seat assignments (like CO), none of this only do it at booking and checking nonsense.

- Support multiple frequent flyer numbers, not just your own - e.g. If I am non-elite with United, but elite with some other *A, why can't I book a ticket with an economy-plus seat online at United.com? Why should I have to call, or book on USAir's site? Similarly, why can't I book on nwa.com, and give it my CO frequent flyer number (or have to wait until check-in)? Give me status based on the best of all my accounts, and then let me choose where to allocate the miles separately.

- Show award availability nearby to my search - e.g. like the CO award calendar, but expand it for nearby airports, or let me filter it by regular metal or alliance.

- Show what leg is having award availability problems - it makes a big difference if the missing part is on a short regional jet flight (that I could either just pay for separately, or drive for), versus the inter-continental part.

- Have an expert setting.

As others have said:

1. No pop-ups/unders

2. Compatible with Safari

3. Fare buckets listed

Of the ones in existence now, I'd rate those built on ITA engines like NW as the best and others like United as the worst (excluding sites of carriers outside the U.S., which can be dreadful).

Supporting all the partnerships and partner flights is something I'm sure a lot of people would like to see. ITA might show NW itineraries priced out with DL or CO flights, but your odds of getting those called up on the NWA.com site are slim, especially for complex itinararies. And chances are if you plunk it in segment by segment you won't get the price, even if you can get all the segments to come up.

Partner segments on award travel are another thing. NW probably has the one of the best online bookings (with a limited but still rare multi-city capability), but the call centers still get the $15 calls when people try to add CO or DL to the mix in hopes of getting something to work.

It'd also seem that supporting STOPOVERS better would be needed if the big carriers would ever stop treating those and one-ways like the work of the devil. Some will use stopovers (usually poorly) as a marketing tool, like UA for DEN or HP for LAS. But website support isn't good.

One big thing the OP has going for him is that many people notice the booking shortcomings of websites when the alternative is to try to deal with one of those infurating voice systems or pay $15 to book through an agent. Hopefully that'll drive improvements.

Agree with everyone here 100%.

Because of my travel style (I'm a young, single college student--i.e. flexible--with a moderately low budget), I love Kayak's Buzz feature, Travelocity's Flexible Dates option, and Travelocity's Dream Maps option. Anything that helps me find when and where the cheap fares are is welcome.

Kayak's Buzz option is really the best interface, but the downside with it is that because it's based only on searches that real users have actually done and is not integrated with the actual publishings of fares, it's not comprehensive. FareCompare's Destinations option is extremely promising, but it suffers from the same problem that Travelocity's Flexible Dates does: it initially only searches by the published dates, not by availability, so it takes awhile to find a valid set of dates on which the fares are actually available. I understand that this is because the GDS systems charge fees for every actual seat lookup. This should not be a problem on an airline's own site, as they do not need to pay a GDS system since they are looking up seats on their own system.

A combination of Kayak's Buzz, Travelocity's Flexible Dates, and (of course) booking directly with the airline to avoid the GDS surcharges is what allowed me to fly ANC-BOS/LGA-ANC for $380 on United. That's extremely good for flights from up here (often ANC-SEA is >$400 rt).

If United really wanted to secure my business, they should have let me find all of that out at united.com.

Of course, as someone else mentioned, it's time for the legacy carriers to dump most of their fare buckets and go to a simpler setup like Southwest does. People go to southwest.com because they know (regardless of the interface options there) that they can get a reasonably-priced ticket with a minimum of confusion and hassle. Things like fares and the like are pretty much out of your control as a web designer, but that's something to pass on to management--that people are driven away by the difficulty of reliably finding good fares. (I NEVER just go to www.alaskaair.com, put in a pair of dates, and search for ANC-LAX. Doing that always brings up something in the $600-800 range. I've never flown to LAX for more than $450, and often I'll do it for $250-350. In contrast, it's no problem for me to go to southwest.com and find my grandfather a very reasonable fare from BUR-TUL without a lot of extraneous searching. So, Southwest has his business. (I do typically check a little bit to see if I can beat that price on any other airlines, but Southwest usually has the best fare.)

There should NEVER be a reason to have to call the callcenter (and I'm sure airlines would like to not have to hire as many people), whether it's for itinerary changes, award reservations, or whatever. If the CSR can do it on his or her computer, we should be able to do it on our computers. This includes searching for partner award availability. I became an Aeroplan member just so I could use Air Canada's web site to find all Star Alliance awards. If they can do that, why can't other Star Alliance sites? With United, I have to call them to see if any of their partners can fly me to a destination. And with United's awards booking engine, I have to search specific date pairs (although they do search a few days around those dates, which helps a little). But if I call them, the agent can search months of availability with just a couple of keystrokes. Why involve her? Why not let me do it at home? Perhaps the airlines don't want us to know that much about their availability, so they hide it behind a CSR. But it would really save costs and hassle and make me happier with them if they allowed me to just do it all online.

AA.com offers an option to search all carriers, but it never seems to work. I can't say that it's fair to request that an airline direct business to their competitors. Having said that, it would be a really nice feature...

Definitely remember my dates and airport pairs when returning to the search screen to modify something. That's a no-brainer (and REALLY annoying!)

Agree with the popup calendars. Let me type it in manually if I want. If I need a calendar, make a little calendar button that I can click.

There are lots more that I can't think of now--I'll start making a list next time I search for a flight and post my results.

Easiest...
 

:) direction: visit UA's nefarious "United.Bomb" and contruct a site exactly opposite!
At least, judging form the flames in the Flyertalk UA forum...