lonman

why is it impossible to book an itinerary as simple as nyc-lax on this website. if i leave it intact, it doesn't match my flight times (i want a redeye on the way back, but it gives me everything at 8am). if i separate the segments, it tells me my flights aren't in sequential order.

ARRGH

[This message has been edited by lonman (edited 10-24-2000).]

richard

I have noticed this "not in sequential order" thing before quite often -- it is a Travelocity bug big-time, surprised they never fixed it. You end up having to reset everything and start over

CLTFlyer

Just remember, if you don't like the itinerary generated - make sure you hit cancel on the screen (not back - never back). Yes, it'll send you back to US's home page - but at least you have to shut the browser down to book on the next attempt. And you won't end up with the "not in sequential order" garbage.

Good thing is that you're doing the "Multiple Destinations" thing and separating the segments - thus preventing the system from refusing to show you a set of flights in their own timetable.

[This message has been edited by CLTFlyer (edited 10-24-2000).]

deelmakur

The USAirways website may be winning awards, but the booking engine sucks. Any deviation, such as going back and modifying for things like different airports, or days, causes the thing to send you back to the beginning, with a dumb message about flights being "out of sequence". Sometimes it tells you the booking was unsuccessful, so you do it again, and discover you have actually made (and been charged for) two reservations on the same flights. Calling the airline results in the regular res people telling you they can do nothing with these. That's because the internet booking is contracted to Travelocity. The locaters are even different, and you end up with two...one from the site people, and the other from the company. Want to use this thing. Bring your lunch. You'll be a while.

CLTFlyer

It's too bad the recent online survey that popped up when I was on US's site didn't allow comments like - "Your booking engine is as useful as (insert preferred term for human waste here)." At least I could say that on ease of booking, I was extremely disatisfied.

kilane_royalist

I've gotten to keeping to browsers open and just closing one if it gets the error.

JetTroop

Amen brother! I just happened to check some reservations online and saw that some flights had changed for the worse. So I call up USAirways.com and tell them my story and give them my locater. The guy looks and looks and comes back to say he's having a hard time and goes back to looking and trying to fix...

Finally after 10 minutes (seemed like that), he got back on and said, I gave him the wrong locater number. I had used an 20,000 RT upgrade and my locater changed. Now how am I supposed to know that? No one said anything to me. There are two locater numbers on my online reservation, neither of those are what he gave me and here he is, mad at me.

As he reads my new locater number to me, he's saying "V as in victor, T as in tom, D as in DUMMY, S as in sam etc.." I got rather ticked at the D. First... am a I cop, so D for me is David. In the military it's Delta. Just about anything other than Dummy probably would have been non-offensive. That and the fact he stressed the DUMMY part. To him it was my fault altogether.

He said I needed to call the next day and speak to someone else about my problem and that he couldn't help me. The next day a very nice lady came to my rescue and helped me out.

One thing I do like about the site is 'Flexible' dates search. I find some super, super, super low flights for exactly the times I want...or within reason. That's the only thing I like.

Sorry this is long...had to get that off my chest.

[This message has been edited by JetTroop (edited 10-25-2000).]

BizJet

I like US Airways new website, but the Travelocity booking sucks. As simple as that!

It can not do backtracking itineraries. It is not at all unreasonable for one to fly NYC-PHL-Europe or BOS-PHL-Europe, yet it will not give you that routing. Yet it offers bizarre ones where US will take your further north (NYC-BOS or BOS-YYZ) and then another airline (VS, BA, AC, etc.) will take you across the ocean.

I've had trouble booking same-day trips. That "not in sequential order" crap.

tulane85

More complaints:

1. It takes awhile to load four screens, waiting for a prompt between each, just to view my current milage level. What's with the question after you say you want to view miles: "current statement?"? How often do I want to know how many miles I had accrued as of last spring?

2. Does anyone else get this? After each and every click to change screens or enter info, I am prompted with: "the following screen contains information that is not secure. Display the nonsecure items yes/no?" So, for me, checking my milage means eight dialog boxes or screen button selections. Delta.com: one click.

deelmakur

The "secure/unsecure prompt" boxes you mention also come up on my system. I first thought it was a Windows related problem, and called Microsoft. They assured me it is the site, not the operating system.

tulane85

Update on this issue. I recently wrote US about this, using the comment feature at their web site:


I found their reply to be disappointing:

In other words, deal with it. Surely there is a way to ensure a safe web site without introducing a pop-up prompt at each screen.

Does anyone know if there is a setting in Internet Explorer that can prevent this pop-up message?

pitflyer

I belive that problem only shows on Internet Exploder -- and it probably has to do with them using images from a regular (http) server in the middle of a secure (https) document. If they just updated their page to use https:// for everything on secure pages, no problems. But lazy, lazy programmers.

Tolarian Wind

I installed the public beta of IE6 and this "insecure items" problem went away.

TW

ThisFlightNoFuel

pitflyer: You are correct. Many of the images in the secure areas of the site are the same files used in the non-secure areas (such as the homepage). Their logic is probably that using the same images will make the site load more quickly. The non-secure images don't need to be "re-downloaded" in the secure areas of the site because they're already in the user's disk cache. The trade off is that PC versions of IE will give you a security prompt because the page contains items that are on both secure and non-secure servers. So maybe they weren't lazy so much as they chose one option over another, deciding that the drawback of the security prompt was worth the reduction in page loading time. Now, whether or not this was the right decision...

As Tolerian Wind noted, the upcoming PC versions of IE will address this issue. It will be able to tell whether or not non-secure content in a page (such as image files) will actually affect the security of secure data (such as user sumitted data). Current versions of Netscape on both Mac and PC platforms do this already, as does the current version of IE for the Macintosh, so you shouldn't get the "non-secure items" warning using those browsers.

tulane85

Thanks, guys; I'll give the IE6 beta a try.

After all, I just can't bear the exertion of clicking any more than I have to!