San Gottardo

Dear Swiss Lurker

I use the Swiss iPhone app several times a week, primarily for checking in and for booking flights.

There is one thing that I find an utter nuisance: every time I have to type in my login details. EVERY other airline iPhone app that I use (LH, BA, AF, QR, DL, AF, U2, etc) stores my login details once I have logged in once. That is the true point of mobile apps: they should be able to be used on the go, easily. Having to type in my login data every time is an unnecessary waste of time. Some users may not want the app to store their data, but they can opt out. And by the way, the same is true for the internet web site: why doesn't it store my login data?

Another point of irritation, although less of a bother, is the inability to pre-select seats at time of reservation. The privilege exists for SEN/HON even when flying in Eco, but for some reason the functionality is not offered, neither on the iPhone app nor on the internet web site. So I have to call LX every time after having done the reservation online. A waste of my time and certainly not what the people managing your call centres like to see (I take working time from them to do something that I should have been able to do myself).

Lastly, an "interesting" one: I usually download my mobile boarding pass into Passbook. Usually, there then is an alert on the phone's home screen once I get close to the departure airport, which I can then just swipe and use at the security lane and boarding gate scanners. However, there is an anomaly for departures from Paris CDG: the app geolocalisation doesn't recognise that I am at CDG. This only happens for the LX boarding passes, I do not have that problem with LH boarding passes, although flights leave from the same gates. What is more: once I get close to Terminal 2 of CDG (where Air France leaves from), the alert suddenly appears. So basically the problem is that the Swiss mobile boarding passes in Passbook do not recognise that I am at CDG when I am at CDG Terminal 1 (where LX leaves from), but recognises that I am at CDG when I am at another terminal. I have no idea how the technology behind works, but somehow there is an error for the LX boarding passes. They have "misplaced" CDG airport. Surely the people developing and maintaining the mobile app and working on the integration with Passbook will find this one interesting (and they can contact me if they want to know more).

Thanks for passing on these comments, and I expect the first two to be easy to fix, they are common standard with other airlines.

SwissInternationalAirLines

Dear San Gottardo,

Thank you very much for your feedback! I've forwarded it to the responsible department and will let you know in case I hear something about planned changes.

Best regards,
Nick

SwissInternationalAirLines

Dear San Gottardo,

Sorry for getting back to your questions with such a delay. My colleagues got back to me in time but I forgot to pass on their feedback. Nevertheless, I do not want to keep you in the dark. We did, of course, take your feedback into consideration and tried to trace what was going wrong.

- Regarding the login: It appears as if you are using the website login which runs out after 20 mins. This bug should be fixed by now.

- Regarding the seating issue: This is a problem my colleagues could not trace back. Overall, this functionality seems to work fine.

- With respect to the CDG Passbook issue: The error has been reported and should be fixed.


Thank you for your valuable feedback! Thanks to you we could fix the bugs you reported.


Best regards from ZRH,
Nick

YuropFlyer

Dear SwissLurker

I do have the same issue as SanGottardo, and as much I'm aware, so do many others here on FT. We can select seats, but they won't "stick", ie as soon as we exit the seatmap, they're gone, even though we "saved" them (and without error)

So I do believe it is a genuine problem. The only fix to it till today is calling LX SEN hotline, which I don't mind, but certainly costs LX quite a bit. Plus those customers that thought (as they didn't noticed) to have reserved seats and only at the airport/when doing OLCI realise instead of 29A they get 38E..

SwissInternationalAirLines

Dear YuropFlyer,

Thanks for the additional feedback. I will get in touch with my colleagues right away.

Best regards,
Nick

sfoeuroflyer

First let me say that I am extremely satisfied with SWISS service in the air. I am extremely critical of the functionality of the iPhone app. What I detail below is functionality that other airlines offer.

1. Check in function is lame. I should be able to log into the app and if a reservation has been made which has my name and Miles and More number I should be able to immediately access that reservation. Instead I have to log in each and every time with my name and then look up the email from our travel department which has the SWISS booking reference number. That is lame. If fly domestically within the US on AA (by the way I would never dream of flying on the Star Alliance partner United, which in every respect is a putrid airline), my iPhone app instantly accesses my reservation using name and frequent flyer number. No need to fish out that pesky booking number.

2. Delivery of the boarding pass is prehistoric. With the AA app, I simply click and the boarding pass is automatically delivered to the app and resides there. No need to fill in an email address. This is not exotic functionality. Even the SBB does this for tickets purchased with the app.

So someone at SWISS needs to see what state of the art travel apps do and bring that functionality to the app. As it stands now, despite outstanding service at the airport and in the air, the tech experience has great room for improvement.

San Gottardo

Something else I noticed in addition to that most annoying of nuisances, the need to re-login every time: there is FAR too much unnecessary text! The only screen that has a clean and intuitive screen layout is the home screen. Go to the login screen and there already is clutter and lots of small print for stuff like "what you can do with the profile" (would be sufficient to have a link if someone really doesn't know), "create a new profile" (as if someone would do that from this screen by clicking on the small print underneath the profile login screen - one would never go there if one didn't have a profile already!).

The screen that has the overview of reservations is even worse. "This is what this screen does", bla bla, text, etc - unnecessary stuff using screen real estate. Then: the reservations are in no logical order. Why not show them in sequence?

And the ultimate rubbish is the screen that shows an individual reservation. Redundant text all over, one has to scroll through a lot of useless stuff - some of it doesn't even work, such as advance seat booking - before arriving at "check-in". Why not have a simply overview of flight details and below that big surfaces to tap on: check-in, upgrade, select your seat, change booking/re-send ticket. Without all the explanations, because these four descriptions are self-explanatory.

There are so many well designed airline iPhone apps out there, I don't understand why LX has spent money and then get this graphical and user-unfriendly disaster.

And I am disappointed not to have heard back after more than a month. At least with an update of something like "the team is looking at it and will update in the next version which is released in x weeks", or "the team is checking and will let us know in x weeks". But just nothing. Very disappointing, and very un-LX.

LoungeLizzard

An honest answer indeed. ^
And obviousely true as well.

SwissInternationalAirLines

Dear San Gottardo,

I am truly sorry for not having gotten back earlier - it was entirely my fault. The e-commerce team had been working on the issues right after your post but posting their feedback simply slipped through. As I did not have a clear indication of the timeframe, I could not include it in my first reaction. But I still wanted to communicate the team's feedback and wanted to get back to you despite the delay.

Nonetheless, it was clearly not up to our goals of providing timely feedback here on FT and thus, I would like to offer my sincere apology.

All additionally contributed feedback is, of course, also being forwarded to the responsible teams. I would give you a timeframe if I could. But I can promise that this time it won't take that long to get a feedback! :-)

Best regards from ZRH,
Nick

SwissInternationalAirLines

Dear LoungeLizzard,

Thanks for pointing out the typo. I just corrected it.

I am sorry to hear that you are left with the impression of intentionally being kept in the dark, though. I hoped to achieve quite the opposite with my delayed but honest response, and with our presence here in general. But I will certainly do my utmost best to avoid such an impression in the future.

Best regards,
Nick

PetzLUX

@Nick:

No need to apologize to that guy.
It is just cheap bashing from his side.

San Gottardo

Nick

I need to apologize for one thing: I keep on complaining that I have to re-login myself everytime I use the iPhone app.

After haivng played around with it I actually did find a way to record my login details and for the app to remember them! It is pretty well hidden, but it does work. I usually know every little feature of the airline apps on my phone because I like playing around with them, but this one I had missed so far. But then so had you

Now that takes away the biggest hassle with the app. Apologies for making such noise about something that actually works well. My bad.

On all the other points that I mentioned earlier (no ability to pre-assign seats, clumsy layout with too much text, etc.) it would be good to get the feedback from your team.

salzburgflyer

Hi Nick,

I am running the SWISS App on my iPhone 4, iOS 7.1.
It is impossible to log in...
I've tried both MAM and SWISS log in, writing the password in the username field and opposite, using the SWISS password with MAM number etc etc.
Nothing works, it just says 'your details have not been recognized..'

Hope it gets fixed soon!

V

pobbop

Yep, same issue here with M&M...even reset my PIN to make sure it wasns't my error. Can't have been QA'd

catandmouse

Impossible to login with my Swiss profile. (Glad to see I'm not the only one with the problem - I thought I was doing something wrong).
And just to point out, with my Android phone, there's no problem. I logged in once and my bookings are always there.