Stupid airline web tricks. Friday, 13th November 2009 Source : Timothy O Neil-Dunne ~ T2Impact.com

Since its the weekend it is time for my (occasional) round up of stupid airline tricks - this weeks focus is airline behavior on their websites.

My candidates this week are members of the SkyTeam family. So listen up Delta and Air France - this applies to you. Equal billing BTW for one of the awards goes to Amadeus.

This week's award for "making things unnecessarily complicated and making me annoyed" goes to Delta for the formal inclusion of the name in the sign in process. With due deference to DL - they may have been required to do this for some arcane reason but since no other major airline makes me do that - I am surprised. it is an unnecessary annoyance. So now every time I use Delta.com - I have to go through this annoying extra step.

Thank you the World's largest airline for making me do things that are really unnecessary and constantly reminding me of this fact every time I use your website.

The second award goes jointly to Amadeus and Air France's subsidiary CityJet. The award for "completely inane form of bilingual user experience because I am too lazy to ask the customer what is his preferred language and because I am telling him what to do" goes to these two Air France subsidiaries. (Amadeus still counts Air France as a parent with airline's 23.14% Shareholding in the GDS giant).

It is so pervasive throughout the booking ticketing and itinerary process that I am just flabbergasted at the extent of the nature of the problem.

By now AF as a global airline should be able to have its subsidiaries support a reasonably decent customer experience. But no ... here is one of the transgressions I have encountered - there are so many!

I am flying from one English Speaking Country to Another. So why show me the information in French at the top in bold vs English at the bottom in light type!!!

The translations themselves are appalling. Some of the worst Franglais I have seen.

The Award goes jointly to Amadeus and Air France/CityJet because the engine is an Amadeus one and it lets you know throughout the process that it is Amadeus powering the transaction. So they get equal billing on this one.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. And Airline Webmasters (are you still called that) I shall be watching you...

Cheers
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