Why do airline websites suck so much? | Hacker News Reader

Why do airline websites suck so much?

7 pointsgregcohn13 comments

They have the worst usability, no social media integrations, tiny buttons, difficult to find basic functions, etc. etc.

Dustin Curtis wrote three articles on this, initially with his disgust for AA's website and some suggestions on fixing it (http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html).

A designer replied to Dustin about his limitations and the efforts he's made and Dustin decided to post the response (http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html).

The designer was fired an hour later (http://www.dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html).

Probably because they're too busy extorting exorbitant amounts of cash out of their customers in return for crap service, rude flight attendants and badly designed websites that look like they're from the 90's.

>exorbitant amounts of cash

Really? I can fly to the other side of the world for less than $1,000. That seems like a very reasonable deal to me.

And if the price of being able to explore the world cheaply is surly flight attendants, that's a price I'm willing to pay. As are most people, I suspect.

As a timely example, right now Air France's mileage booking tool is down. You would never know that from the fact that there are links in their Flying Blue club to "book a miles flight", and on the page it links to a prominent call to action to use the flight booking tool... what tool? and no error message.

But they're all bad -- mileage booking tools where no mileage pricing is displayed, revenue-fare booking tools where they are displayed "in order of price" without pricing until you click a tiny link to the next page, etc.

Insanity.

I expected Virgin, the "hip" airline, to be the exception to this rule, but their site is also terrible. Half the time it throws an error at the end of the checkout process and tells me to call a customer service representative in order to complete my order. I've also seen a lot of tweets about the issue, so apparently their site is just FUBAR.

Banks seem to be in the same boat. Has the bidding war for programmers at startups and major tech companies made it impossible for these companies to hire anyone good?

I actually completely forgot my bank had a shitty website. Thanks to Mint.com's app. (And before I get accused of shilling here, though I've never seen that claim made against someone, I just want to say: they should want to get it right before some third party does.)

I wish mint.com was usable in Europe :(

/rant

The bank here in France are HORRIBLE. For example the weekend transaction don't show up on the website, like if they had to input them by hand or something. Fucking terrible.

Société Générale has slightly improved recently (although yes, overall it's still terrible)

Maybe the airlines don't realise how bad things are because no-one takes the time to tell them?

Write up an email with constructive criticism and send it to their customer support people, web master, etc. It could be that no-one except for the web people from the company has actually looked at it.

I somehow don't think that's the case, given that even crappy airlines have dozens of support staff dedicated toward fielding customer complaints (figure 100 callers per cancelled flight, and dozens of cancelled flights due to weather or whatever, and that's a lot of bandwidth).

The primary reason their web support people don't get any such messages is because they don't make their contact information available. Given the quality of anonymous discourse these days, there'd be an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio even if they did.

"Why don't you fly to Wagga Wagga? Your site is broken!"

"This used to cost $49 (in 1965) and now it costs $999! Your site is broken!"

"The church of the dancing cactus demands you put a dancing cactus on your web site in order to get our business."

Balance that echo chamber that comes from only hearing corporate demands, hire-the-lowest-bidder mentality, and constant ad campaigns, flight schedule changes, price formula changes, availability formula changes, and overwhelmed servers, and it's a wonder it works at all.

The primary nut to crack here is a way to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio for customer service complaints.

I was just thinking this a few days ago while visiting United. It's absolutely horrific.

Because the value in making it easier to use is low. Often, the value to make it more confusing is high. Not all "bad" webpages are that way on accident.

Also, factors like social media integration aren't implicitly good.

We gave this guy 5 points for a sweeping generalization? Really. Get me a fucking time machine, this site was great 3 years ago without all the fucking yuppies.

What's next? Why do black people like fried chicken? Why Gob, do my friends bleed out of their asses but I don't?

Oh and here's why, because everyone and their mother wants the absolute cheapest possible flight. They don't care if they have to navigate a 50 screen questionnaire about their sex lives to get it. Consumers set the bar low and most major airlines are right there with them. Of course some airlines set the bar high, thus accomplishing "product differentiation" and "value added" (don't worry Timmy, some day you will learn what those words mean).

And. That. Explains. Everything. (except why we have a yuppy festival here instead of the previously good intelligent, rational thought convention)

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