Here’s a boring post.
I’m putting my Quality Assurance hat on now, so you are going to get to see another side of the artist-at-large in this post. And in the process a few of the airlines will get a free critique of their web applications that allow us to purchase tickets online. This post is a follow-up to the previous post, My American Nightmare, and is a round-up of my experiences in trying to get out of the country as inexpensively as possible.
One would think that all of the airline sites would use pretty much the same applications to enable the public to buy tickets directly from their web sites, and on the surface it does look that way. But spend any amount of time on any of the sites and the differences – the quirks and the features – start popping through. I’m not going deep into the software application that is running the engine, I’m just doing a little on the surface, what we call, black box testing. No pun intended. Just poking around. And not much of what I’m going to say has been done for any other purpose than purchasing a ticket, I didn’t intentionally compare these sites, I was intentionally comparing prices.
My flight plans are/were out of the US and into Mexico.
Kayak.com – easy to use
The first web site I always check for pricing is Kayak.com. It is not an airline web site, but it aggregates the latest prices out there, from cheapest to most expensive and finds pricing on airlines that you may not have considered flying for your next trip. The Kayak site is fairly easy to use and clicking through on a fare may or may not take you to the airline’s web site. It could also take you to CheapTickets, Orbitz, Hotwire, etc., depending on where they found the price. But you get to pick which site you are going to click through, so it won’t be a surprise. All in all it’s one of the best price aggregators out there on the web and a great place to start researching your trip.
A lot of the time the cheapest fares can be found directly on the airline’s web site.
United.com – user friendly
United’s site is fairly user friendly. It’s main color is a peaceful light blue, with playful graphics, which when going through the frustrating process of trying to find the best fare, really makes a positive difference. The web site is doing its best to keep you happy through the process. The default settings on finding a price do three things right – search by both schedule and price, set the default departure time at ‘Anytime’ and when the schedule comes up, it puts the non-stop flight/s first at the top of the list and then the rest of the flights are in order of departure times. It also notes the least expensive fare at the top of the page, so you can immediately know if there is a flight you can afford on that day. You can easily change your search criteria, such as the date of departure in the sidebar without having to start your search all over again. In all of the searches I’ve done on United, the server responds in a reasonable amount of time. I don’t think I’ve seen any hiccoughs from the server.
United’s site is the only one I’ve been on lately that shows the total price (airfare + taxes/fees), so there are no surprises on the purchase page.
USAir.com – a little outdated interface, but usable
USAir is the airline that got me into trouble in the first place :p For years and years if I was late for a flight they would just stick me on the next one. No problem. If I bought a ticket and wanted to change my flight, no problem. They were like flying in a giant schoolbus. No longer. Well, it is still like a giant schoolbus, but the laisez-faire attitude is no longer there.
The site is immediately usable for people searching for round trip fares for specific dates, but to search for one-ways or flexible dates, one has to click through to a second page. The form fills in default dates so you need to remember to change them. There is no option to search by schedule and lowest price, only one or the other.
JetBlue.com – fairly user friendly
Not only can you search round trip or one way from the home page, JetBlue remembers your recent searches so you can just click on the link and the form is automagically filled in. The search results are in a seven day spread given by price and schedule, but the daily tabs don’t show the least expensive prices. Light colors and minimal information makes the site easy to use. For my destination though JetBlue was the most expensive.
Mexicana.com – somewhat user friendly
Mexicana’s web site make me want to fly them just because. That also might be because the current photo on the home page is of the place I’m trying to get to … I’m searching for flights to Mexico so this might make more sense than if I were flying somewhere else. The web site feels light and airy. Mexicana has the intuitive default settings, but one has to remember to choose which country you are sitting in before it will find flights and prices. Otherwise a pesky little pop-up appears as a reminder. It takes a while for it to go away, and you can’t do anything until it disappears. There is a way to automagically detect the physical location of the request, so I don’t quite understand the significance of having to remember to choose it. It also won’t believe that you know the airport code and you have to pick your airport out of a pop-up list, even if there is only one choice. Flights are given in a kind of sort of order according to departure time, although you can choose how to sort them from the drop down menu at the top of the page. For some reason the just after midnight flights are always at the bottom of the list rather than the top. Flights and prices are given for a seven day spread, so there is no opportunity to change flight info in the sidebar. Flights on this airline have been reasonably priced every single time I’ve searched them, and I’ve been watching their fares for about a year now. And for what it’s worth, all flights go through Mexico City. Unless you might be going to Guadalajara. But if you are going beyond Guadalajara, you’ll get routed through Mexico City.
AA.com – frustrating
I’ve been stuck on the American Airlines web site because that is where my canceled ticket cash is stashed. So I am kind of being held hostage by them. In my daily perusal of their site for an inexpensive replacement ticket I have found their site to be slow enough that I can almost watch the gears turning in the background. I have had reserved flights disappear from My Reservations queue hours before the purchase deadline. So that when I go back to purchase the ticket, not only is it not there as I thought it would be, the flight is now fifty bucks more than it was. So my search starts all over again. Seat availability is only viewable if a flight is put on hold. To change criteria for a flight search, one has to go back to the home page and start over which feels cumbersome given the strain it causes on the server. One also has to remember to check all the appropriate boxes as the defaults don’t make sense. The default criteria are to search for morning flights by schedule, not price. Maybe that is making sense to one subset of their passengers, but not to me. Maybe it’s a cash flow thing, as if you search with their defaults, you’ll almost always come up with the more expensive tickets first. The look and feel of the site is a bit outdated and could use a lightening up. I know that the AA site is using the corporate colors, but it could use them in a way that doesn’t feel daunting or governmental.
Tips for the airlines:
- Check your form fill in defaults. The broadest choices are the best.
- I’m all about minimal design. Busy sites just confuse me. Decide which info is really needed for the purchase.
- Minimize the number of pages one has to click through to get to purchase.
- If you allow holds, give the actual time the hold runs out and/or send an email an hour before a hold is canceled.
- Make it easy to change search criteria during the searching process. Going back to home page is just as easy as going to another airline’s site.
- This is not 1996 – the center tag is your friend.
Got any thoughts on any of these airline’s web sites? Post them in the comments area!
