This is something I think frequently myself! "Recently, I had the horrific displeasure of booking a flight on your website, aa.com. The experience was so bad that I vowed never to fly your airline again." Hilariously, some folks at American Airlines agreed.
Monday, June 1, 2009
15
He left out the part about 200 people constantly trying to get each other fired and undermine everyone elses efforts. Or that you might even start enjoying the sites failure (even though you work there), because passive aggressive fumes are all you can smoke.
(Psssst. They're just linking to him, so he'll redesign the Awl.)
He could have booked an AA flight on one of the thousands of other online airline booking sites. I don't know why he chose to use the AA's site since he found the interface so difficult.
You can't redeem miles anywhere else, though, can you?
(Full disclosure: I've been an "Aadvantage" member since 1997 and I still have no idea how the fuck to redeem miles.)
on the phone... but you've got to raise a little hell to get them to 86 the "on the phone" extra charges.
Good question. I vowed after a recent experience ON THE PLANE not to fly them again. I think it was the stink coming off the bathroom into the cabin. The site is the least of their problems.
http://www.snopes.com/travel/graphics/seat29e.pdf
This is one of my all time favorite things ever. Ever. EVAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Katie, that link does not work.
try
http://msgboard.snopes.com/travel/graphics/seat29e.pdf
or the link in the 5th paragraph here
http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/seat29e.asp
I could be wrong, and my track record speaks to that point, but I think the AA design problem is really due to all major airlines having to sync their websites with that Skynet-ish centralized codesharing legacy mainframe program they all use (Sabre?). It's very old and difficult to use and would cost like a gazillion dollars to replace. Continental, United, etc. They're all about as bad as American. Airlines like Southwest have good websites principally because they share no information with anybody. Win some, lose some, etc.
"The Sabre system processes more than 19,000 transactions per secondâ€"about 2 billion every day." *SHRIEK* *WE FOUND SKYNET*
With American Gate Agents in control!!! We are fracking doomed to a future of center seats and warm diet coke. Just kill me now terminators.
Another excellent point.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/books/review/Russo-t.html
That reply re-triggered my PTSD from having worked on just such a site.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've not had problems.
I search for the cheapest tickets via Kayak.com or my Expedia.com account, and the last three times all came up on American Airlines flights (to Edinburgh).
SO my experience is because I went through the third party sites?
And, no, I haven't racked up enought Advantage points to cash for anything...I'll let you know how that goes in a couple of years.