What's worse is they look like native OS alerts (on Windows) so when one says "SECURYIRT ALERT!! CALL NOW" it's that much more effective at getting people on the phone with scammers.
Communication platforms; messaging apps (Slack, Discord etc); email sites (gmail and co.) also make sense. Financial platforms (banks, Stripe etc)
Once you start getting out of these two categories, then yeah, it gets silly. No way should an airline website even be allowed to ask to send push notifications.
Google does have a way for Chrome users to not show the notification window (https://yespo.io/blog/google-chrome-will-now-block-abusive-b...) by default (https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/9799829?hl=en) but I really wish that this was flipped, so that Google would first need to approve sites to use notifications, similar to the Public Suffix List.
It seems that companies like this can't help but abuse the permissions I grant them, so the result is that they don't get any permissions at all.
Financial data or travel info is something I'm actively watching, when I travel, just like car traffic. Otherwise, why would I need to know? That's a good question to ask anyway anytime you come across an inbox. I have been in management really long now and designing your information flow strategically is crucial to being effective.
Your flight is delayed/now boarding/etc?
Many airlines now more or less force you to install their bespoke apps, which could have just as well been websites, just to board their planes. I'm less than happy to install them.
Your phone needs a web browser or an app. An app for every airline you ever use? You already have a web browser.
They could SMS but its more expensive to send, often even more so for customers on roaming to receive.
Nothing else is universal.
I think there are much better possible solutions. An open notification standard or reasonable pricing of bulk sending SMS would do it.
If browser notification permissions would have a TTL, I'd might considering it. But until this happens I won't allow anyone to send me browser notifications. And even then I'd be very picky.
Generally, the recommendation is that you get to the airport at least two hours before your flight departs. Ideally, you shouldn't be rushing to try to get your plane.
Granted, the world has changed since that was first a recommendation, but even in today's connected world, it's still a good idea to get there two hours before departure, in my experience.
A lot of delays are known much earlier than that. For example if a flight gets seriously delayed taking off and the plane is going to turn round and return, then the return flight will be delayed.
In any case, once at the airport delays will be announced and shown on screens. Once you get there you do not need phone notifications.
And yet I’m sure airlines will push you towards the app every time!
I don't understand why people would want that, but neither do I understand the people who actually enter their email address in those "subscribe to my newsletter" popovers.
It's not that there are 0 use cases where it could possibly be convenient to get notifications from a plain site but, like you said with the email example, 95% of the legitimate use cases are probably better modeled as an app anyways.
It's always saddened me that people failed to understand the web platform, and never more so than today when that platform could be on the verge of extinction.
Young people don't remember this: in the 1990s if a big corporation wanted to make a 1-line change to an application deployed to a fleet of desktops they'd have to update every single machine and to do so they'd probably have to hire at least 1 FTE and probably more for installer engineering and other makework.
With the web it is often
git pull
As it is I can find web sites with search, links from other sites, bookmarks and history. If you "install" applications you just clutter up your desktop with 300 icons for applications you don't really use which makes it hard to find the 2-3 that you really use.
The best uses I've gotten out of PWAs are on my Linux machine where there either isn't a native app or I wouldn't trust installing one from the manufacturer if there was. At the same time I don't want random websites to have access to the permissions these apps would need so I load the PWA version of the website and now I've got the ideal island of something served as a website but with the elevated permissions it needs.