Airline web site pet peeves?
 

Hello and thanks for reading,

I am a user interface designer.

I have the chance to design an airline web site from top to bottom.

- What are the things that always bug you when using airline booking engines online?

- What are the best user interface experiences you've had?

- This is your chance to shape your future! What do you want in your airline web site? What should we get rid of?

As you would expect, I can't tell you who I am or who I'm working for but please . . how often do you really get asked what you want?! : )

Thanks very much,

Gryphon

I dont want to see yet another useless pop up calendar for choosing dates.

I want to be able to retry a reservation without the web site forgetting how many passengers and what dates I selected last time

I want to see availability of nearby destinations and dates. e.g. If I want London to Las Vegas I would also consider Manchester Las Vegas or London Phoenix - show me all of them.

Let me book out to one place and back from another

Support Firefox

Load quickly with minimal eye candy and really think about giving me information

Dont make me step through hundreds of pages of wizards.

Ive got hundreds more. email me if you want to discuss specific examples.

mysteryflyer

I want to be able to book multiple tix as a combination of award and paid fares, not just one or the other. I always have to do this via phone.

- Allow me to query by fare bucket. If you are going to attach so many promotions and upgrade rules to specific fares, then let me search by category (as least the first letter - Q, K, W, T, etc.)

- Remember my search parameters if I have to go back. For example, if I need to go back to change time of day or date, don't make me reenter everything. Just let me change the fields I want to change.

- Allow me to query partner award availability seamlessly in all cases where an actual agent-to-agent phone call is not needed. I understand that for certain partners, that can't be avoided. But for most, I can't book online, yet I call an agent and he/she can query it online. (Corollary to this: don't change me an insulting phone booking fee on an itinerary that I can't book online.)

In the "like to have" category (as opposed to a pet peeve), how about an airline-specific "dream map"? Let me input a starting point, a date range, and an all-in R/T price point, and show me where I can go. Some of the portal sites have pieces of a nice user interfact - for example, Travelocity's Dream Maps, Orbitz's weekend search tool, etc. But if one of my primary airlines had a good tool like this, I'd be more apt to use it than anything else in cyberspace.

I also dislike the pop-up calenders and think an airline specific dream map would be great.

Along the lines of fare brackets I would like to be able to search for the cheapest flight and have the fare bracket come up with the flight details. It is a pain to click through a ton of stuff to find what bracket it is in but it would also be a pain to search each bracket induvidually. Just show it to me with the details.

Support Safari

No matrix like Alaskaair.com. It just bugs me.

Ability to book award flights online, even if one segment is on a partner. I hate calling agents and then being charged because I want to fly into a smaller city.

. . keep 'em coming!
 

awesome info . . thank you!

Don't be afraid to repeat what others have said . .the more people clammer for a feature or to be rid of one the stronger the argument I have with my client.

What a fun way to do research . . I can tell you mean what your say.

Thanks again,

Gryphon Dart

As a start, I'd even take a simple Southwest-style matrix. They show all of their buckets for an entire day's flights on one page.

Granted, legacy carriers have more buckets. (Maybe this is a hint that they should dump half of them.) Maybe a better solution would be to show the WN-style matrix, but show only the most meaningful levels per that airline's promotions/bonus/upgrade structure. So you'd have maybe six fares or so per flight.

On United, for example, all of my current promotions are tied to Q fares. So, a pet peeve of mine is that United.com doesn't make it easy to find the best available Q-fares in all situations.

Sometimes I can find 'em by tweaking the drop-down box with the upgrade rules in it, but not always. Sometimes I can find 'em by typing in a specific promo code, but not always. Sometimes I can find 'em by selecting and buying a refundable coach ticket (which books in QRA) and then immediately re-pricing the itin which drops it down to a lower nonrefundable Q and kicks a refund back to my CC. But sometimes none of these methods work well...

Oh, one more big one...how could I forget it?

I always want to be able to view and edit my seat assignment. This starts before I buy the ticket: I want to be able to view and select seats before purchase, as well as go back and pick a different flight if I don't like what I see. Then, after purchase, I want to be able to access my itin and view/change seats at any time. Agents can do this today. I should be able to do it online without calling an agent. It's not that I like changing seats: it's just that sometimes when I am willing to buy a seat on a flight without optimal seating available, I want to go back and look at it from time to time to see what's opened up.

I want to be able to see all available fares on the same page. Southwest Airlines does this very well.

I want to be able to search for award tickets on the airline and its partners, and be confident that all available tickets are shown. I want to be able to do this over a range of dates that I provide, to multiple nearby destination options (i.e., anywhere in central Europe), and to be able to book open jaw and stopover award tickets online. (Same for paid tickets, I guess, though I never pay.)

I want to be able to see my seat options before a book a paid or award ticket. The seat may be the deal breaker.

I would like a page that lists probable saver award tickets available from my home airports, the list showing up to a year out. (O.K., 330 or 333 days - whatever the airline allows.) Such a list would motivate me to use my miles to go places I hadn't considered before. It would also motivate me to use those miles for last minute trips. I am retired. My time is very flexible. I can go when the opportunity presents itself.

I would like to see a clear statement of rules for booking award tickets before I go searching for the one I want. How long will you hold a reservation before taking the miles out of my account? (Important for tickets 330 days out needing a return ticket.) Do you allow open jaw tickets? Stopovers? Both? What are the rules for how long a stopover can be? If I see the rules first, I won't be wasting my time searching for impossible tickets.

I want to be able to see a very good system map of the airline and its partners, so I can see at a glance where I can go on my miles. A list of destinations by continent, country, and/or state would also be nice. (Drill down from one to the next?)

Wouldn't it be cool if the website we help design here gets the Fredie Award for best airline website? That would surely motivate other airlines to actually ask their best customers what they want before acting.

I do hope you will be able to tell us which airline website you are designing after it is up an running.

...I think remembering the search criteria I used in an earlier search is the most important thing to me

(Thinking of AA here)

Normal people use the back button on their browser. Support this and don't have it generate an error.

For the love of God, if it is April and I choose a flight in November, HAVE THE RETURN DATE SELECTION DIALOG BE SET TO NOVEMBER.

Allow me to book an award flight on all carriers in an alliance, not just the host airline.

Please don't let it "assume" a return date on a round trip ticket. Make me enter the return date so I don't miss noticing when the system has made a wrong guess.

I'd like to be able to upgrade my reservations using miles without having to call the airline. I'd also like the ability to change my seats at any time after booking and have easy access to detailed and accurate seatmaps at any time.

A few desires and/or pet peeves:

-- Allow an expert search box that'd accept ITA-style queries. I often want to find lots of connections when searching for mileage runs, but the AA site makes it very difficult to choose those specific routings because it only accepts a maximum of four segments in the multicity boxes. That's far too few -- there should be no limit, ideally!

-- re what not to do, look at Elal's website. It is absolutely disastrous.

-- allow timetable searches without having to specify the specific date but rather, put in the routing only