[thelist] [Survey for paper] Airline websites

Matthew Tarpy tarpy at pobox.com
Sun Jan 12 18:49:01 CST 2003


One of the things that has always interested me in SW's website is that they
seem to somewhat tie into how their business model works, and their main
reservation page has a split between where you fly INTO and where you fly
BACK to.

For example, I have a friend that lives in greater LA area. For one of his
projects, he flies out of Burbank (the closest airport he lives near), and
back INTO LAX (because the SW schedule allows him a couple more critical
hours with his client if he goes back into LAX). If he used one of the major
carriers (such as AA, whose website I am most familiar with), he'd have to
look for a "multi-city" or "open-jaw" search option, but with SW's website,
it's right there...he can choose BUR or LAX depending on his needs.

This to me seems well designed, not so much from a technical perspective,
but from the perspective of "giving the user what they need".

But from a technical perspective their website has some advantages. As a
person who flies _a lot_ (100K+ miles a year), I've become familiar with
many of  the games and rules that airlines use. One of the things that is
really convenient, when needed is a little thing called "co-terminal
sharing". For those of you aren't familiar with the term, basically it means
two airports in the same city are pretty much considered (except in rare
cases) to be the same for purposes of calculating a fare basis.

If for instance, I want to fly into Fort Lauderdale, and out of Miami, AA's
website isn't 'smart' enough to see that AA has a co-terminal agreement for
MIA and FLL. SW does (for instance, for LAX, SNA, ONT, and BUR). This to me
is an advantage because if I were to fly SW, I wouldn't have to call to get
the same pricing on SW as I might on AA.

--Matthew

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]
On Behalf Of Ed McCarroll
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 6:01 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: RE: [thelist] [Survey for paper] Airline websites


> just doing a little research here about airline sites and
> the whole e-ticketing system. I personally find they are
> clunky and quite badly designed.

Have you looked at www.Southwest.com?  While I don't know how they
measure up against the issues you raise, I've had little trouble
using them, and they have a relatively convenient tie-in with the
auto rentals who partner in their frequent flyer plan.  I like 'em.

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Ed McCarroll                          MailTo:Ed at ComSimplicity.com
ComSimplicity                                      (310) 838-4330
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