The Cranky Flier » Technology

Yapta’s Glitch-Filled Launch On the Web

CF — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:35:27 +0000

Has anyone had the chance to check out Yapta yet? The site originally launched as a way to see if the price of a ticket you had purchased had gone down. Since some airlines will give you a credit if the fare goes down, this could be a handy little tool to help you save some money. When it first launched, it required you to download a browser plug-in to work, but now you can get Yapta on the web. Unfortunately, there were some kinks that made the site unusable initially, but while some of those have been fixed, there’s still a ways to go before this is a helpful tool.

I decided to go to Yapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) and put in four itineraries I had already purchased to see what I could find.

Northwest to Indianapolis
This one ended before it started. You can’t check Northwest flight information on Yapta (maybe they won’t give you credit for a lower fare?), so I moved on.

United to Indianapolis
By entering my confirmation number and last name, Yapta originally told me that fare had gone down, but that’s because it saw our total price (for two people) as the per person price. Bzzzzt, no good. Now that’s been fixed, and it’s saying that the fare has gone up from $242 to $349. That’s still not quite right. I go on to United.com and it tells me that the price is $370 for that flight right now. So I’m not sure where this is coming from. True, the outcome is the same, but it won’t necessarily always be that way.

JetBlue to San Jose
I figured the third time would be the charm, right? Not quite. Yapta came back saying that the price has gone up from the $109 we paid to $149 per person so there’s nothing to gain here. But just out of curiosity, I checked JetBlue.com and the price is actually $139. Still nothing to gain, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when the fares are not accurate on every itinerary I try so far.

Alaska to Seattle/Portland
This one I thought would be interesting. I’m flying out of Long Beach, going to Seattle, and then flying back from Portland to Orange County. This time, it was just me traveling so there was no issue of viewing two fares as one accidentally. The result? It says that the fare has gone from $310.57 all the way up to $744. Whoa, not so much. I did pay $310.57 (with a % discount certificate), but the current fare is $324. For those keeping score, Yapta was 0 for 3 in getting the correct current price of the ticket. Not good.

Bottom Line
The site has a great idea, but man are there problems. I’m glad to see they’ve worked out the kinks on the fare initially paid. That’s working perfectly now, but every single time it returned the wrong “new” fare that was currently available. Both components need to be right for this site to be successful. Without that component, I still find myself going to the airline website to double-check to actual fare, and that makes Yapta not very useful. Once they solve these problems, it’ll be worth a return visit.

A Warning About Mobile Phone Check-In

CF — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:56:16 +0000

It seems like airlines all around the world are racing to allow passengers to check in for flights using only a mobile phone. I wrote about Air Canada rolling it out last year, and lately both Continental and Delta have put out tests of their own. Delta just put out a blog post on their test as well. It sounds great in theory, but you might want to think twice about it if earning miles is really important to you.

Fellow airline geek and aviation consultant Roy Rosales brought up a good point in an email yesterday. If for some reason miles don’t get credited to your account, you usually have to send in your boarding pass for credit. If you use your cell phone . . . there is no paper boarding pass to send.

In Roy’s case, he flew on a Hawaiian Airlines flight and expected to get Continental miles. They never showed up, and he called Continental to see what happened. Roy was told that an original boarding pass was required in order to get credit. He was curious so he asked what would happen if he had checked-in online and the airline kept the boarding pass, as some do. The agent said it didn’t matter - no pass, no credit.

So, until the airlines decide to somehow alter those policies and email you a PDF that can be used for redemption, you might want to consider keeping a paper record, especially if you’re flying on one airline and trying to earn miles on another.

JetBlue Won’t Let You Use Credits Online

CF — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:06:18 +0000

My fiancee and I were supposed to fly JetBlue in February, but our trip plans changed. I had them move the fare amount into a credit, minus the change fee, knowing I’d use it some other day.

That day came this week, and guess what? Using your credit on JetBlue isn’t very easy. In fact, you can’t do it at all online unless you sign up for a frequent flier account. That’s really annoying and probably Cranky Jackass material. For some reason, I’m feeling benevolent today and will just let them off with a stern finger-wagging (and a post for all my readers to see).

So what happened? Well, I found the flights, filled out my information, and then went to the payment screen. Here’s what it showed me.

Um, so how do I use that credit again? Clearly it’s not a voucher - I don’t have a “voucher code” or anything like that. This is a credit, and there’s no way to use it. So, I called up reservations and asked what to do. That’s when I found out that, well, you can’t do it unless you’re a TrueBlue frequent flier program member.

What? That seemed ridiculous, but sure enough, you can’t use your credit online unless you sign up for an account. Then, they’ll transfer your credit into that account, and the payment-by-credit option will come up.

Personally, I didn’t want to join TrueBlue, so what could I do? Well, I could book it on the phone, but they charge $10 more per ticket to do that. It seems very United-like to charge someone to do something over the phone even though it’s not possible on the internet. So, I broke down and created a TrueBlue account. If they start spamming me, I’ll have to consider forwarding the emails to random JetBlue addresses.

For this, JetBlue, you suck. Please fix it. (Or maybe I should be pleading with your reservation system provider. Is it still Navitaire?)

InsideTrip.com Brings Flight Amenities Back

CF — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:04:50 +0000

When I heard about InsideTrip.com’s launch, I got excited. See, when I was running PriceGrabber’s now-deceased travel site, we tried to incorporate more than just price and schedule into the shopping experience. We added on-time information, seat pitch, powerports, etc. For some reason, other sites have never felt the need to show this sort of information, even if it can give the passenger a reason to pay more for one airline vs another. Now InsideTrip.com has done just that, and I must say, they’ve done a great job collecting and displaying this information.

I think the best way to explain what they have done is to just walk through a search. I figured I’d go for the route that has the most potential. Horrible delays, many competitors, unique product differences? Oh yeah, it has to be LA to New York. So let’s look for a trip from LAX to NYC on some random days in April (9-16).

As you can see (sorry I can’t have a wider picture here), my first results weren’t exactly ideal. A connection to LaGuardia one way and back from Philly’s train station (!?!) the other way? I think not. So, I cleaned it up using filters that any site would have to only show nonstop flights and only to Newark or JFK.

So now, my cheapest flight is $233 on United. Many people would just jump on that one if the flight times were fine and be on their way. But now, all of a sudden, I can see that for $40 more, JetBlue’s option received a 92 instead of an 86. Is it worth it? Well, it depends on what matters to you. Let’s look at the details. First, you’ll see the United flights and then below that the JetBlue flights. I’ve tiled across the three different tabs to make it easy to see everything.

Check out the details and you’ll see that there’s no difference in speed (duh, it’s a nonstop flight on both). When it comes to comfort, JetBlue gives me more legroom and if I’m checking bags, JetBlue does a better job of making sure that they arrive with me.

So is it worth it to pay more? I’d probably pay it, but that’s a personal decision, of course. For me, the most important thing is something that isn’t even addressed here but would be a nice addition. Long Beach is a far easier airport to navigate than LAX is. Sure, it looks like they both have similar security line situations, but anyone who has used both airports knows that you can park closer and cheaper, get to your gate quicker, and have an overall easier time at the airport if you fly out of Long Beach.

It just goes to show that there’s plenty more information that could be useful, and this first round of information that’s still in beta is really just the tip of the iceberg, albeit a very large tip.

There are, of course, some other issues, but I’ve been assured by InsideTrip.com CEO Dave Pelter that they’re working on them. They don’t handle information on codeshare flights accurately all the time. A LAX-LHR search showed that they were using information on Delta aircraft for a flight actually operated by Air France, but that’s something that’s easily fixed. If you happen to see any inaccuracies, Dave asks that you send any issues to info@insidetrip.com so they can fix them.

Fortunately, you can take things out of the trip quality calculation that may not interest you. I would certainly recommend removing aircraft age out of there, because that’s completely irrelevant. Try flying on a 20 year old US Airways 737 and a 40 year Northwest DC-9 and you’ll probably be begging for the DC-9 every time once you see the inside.

Probably the biggest issue I see is that you can’t pick and choose which attributes are most important to you by direction. If I’m flying to Europe, seat comfort will be most important so I can try to get a good night’s sleep, but if I’m flying back, then I care about food and inflight entertainment a lot more. Right now, you can only choose what’s important for the whole itinerary and they don’t have any plans to change that in the near future.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the back end is powered by Orbitz, so these fares will include the booking fee. Once you find what you want, you might still want to head over to the airline website to save a few bucks. Or you might decide that it’s worth the extra money to keep an informative site like this going. Hopefully they’ll start offering more options than Orbitz at some point, but until then, it’s still absolutely worth using this site.

Check-In Online for Ryanair Flights 5 Days in Advance

CF — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:56:52 +0000

Looks like Ryanair’s upgrade went well, and the site even came back up a day early. When I read through the page describing the benefits of the upgrade, one thing stood out.

You can now check-in for your flight online up to 5 days in advance of travel. If both your flights happen to be within 5 days, you can check in for both of them. Interesting.

It used to be that if you had checked in for a flight with most airlines, you were somewhere in the airport. Gate agents could be pretty sure that if they showed a certain number of people checked-in, they could expect them to show up, unless they were on a delayed connecting flight. Even then, it was easy for the agents to predict how things would go. That was really helpful on oversold flights.

But then people started having the ability to check in from home. All of a sudden, people could show up as checked-in, but they could have been stuck in traffic or had a last minute change of plans so there was a better chance they wouldn’t show up. It made it harder to predict how full an aircraft would be.

Now, you can check yourself in 5 days prior to your flight. Imagine all the things could happen in that time? Yet now, people will check in 5 days in advance on Ryanair, because it’s still first come, first serve seating. So, even if you think your plans might change, you’re not going to take a chance that you get stuck with a late boarding number. So they can expect even less certainty.

This makes me think. What’s the point of having you check in at all?

Ryanair Goes Offline for the Weekend

CF — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:48:53 +0000

If you need to book a ticket, change your ticket, or view your reservation on Ryanair in the next few days, you better hurry up. Starting tonight (Friday, Feb 22) at 10pm GMT (11pm on the Continent), Ryanair will completely shut down its booking engine while it upgrades it. The site won’t come back up until Monday, Feb 25 at 11p GMT. During that time, you won’t be able to:

Make a booking online
Make any changes to an existing booking online
Review your flight itinerary online
Check-in online for any flight (fees will be waived to check-in at the airport)
Get any information from Ryanair - they’re shutting down their call centers the whole time

I have to say, I can’t remember ever seeing a system upgrade go like this before. Knowing Ryanair, this was probably the cheapest way to do the upgrade, so they signed on to just shut everything down. Hopefully when it comes back up, they’ll have better luck than other airlines who have recently tried to upgrade. Keep your fingers crossed, and if you’re traveling this weekend, get there earlier than normal to deal with the long lines that are likely to occur.

JetBlue to Test Wireless Email/IM

CF — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:44:11 +0000

Apparently my admission that I was having trouble coming up with things to write yesterday was a blessing. Today, the only thing causing me trouble was choosing which topic to write about. A phone call yesterday evening with JetBlue spokesperson Alison Eshelman about their new upcoming wi-fi service made my choice much easier. Bloggers don’t always have easy access to PR teams at airlines, but JetBlue has always made it easy.

Anyway, it was leaked yesterday that JetBlue would begin testing free wi-fi onboard a single plane beginning with flight 641 from JFK to SFO this Tuesday. Apparently, they weren’t going to announce it until Tuesday, but word got out (see Engadget for tech details) and now they’re willing to talk. Does that mean you’ll be able to read your daily Cranky at 36,000 feet? Well, maybe. If you subscribe with your Yahoo Mail account. Let’s get into some more of the details.

Thanks to LiveTV (which JetBlue owns), Yahoo, and RIM (maker of BlackBerries), JetBlue has been able to put together a test program for onboard wi-fi. If you bring your laptop and you have wi-fi, you can use this service for free, BUT you can only access Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger. Oh. That’s not so cool. If you have a BlackBerry with wi-fi (8820 or Curve 8320), you can use the email and BlackBerry Messenger functions so you’re not just limited to Yahoo. But, they say you won’t be able to surf the web or open attachments regardless of the device you use.

That deflates a lot of the excitement, huh? But I think I understand why it has to be that way. I mean, this can’t be cheap if you have to do it alone, but both Yahoo and RIM stepped up to make it happen. And that’s probably why JetBlue can offer it for free to customers. Would I rather drop some cash for robust internet access on a long haul flight? Absolutely. But is this better than anything you can get on any other airline right now? Well, yeah.

The good news is that I’m told by Ms Eshelman that while there is an exclusive agreement with Yahoo and RIM right now, it only lasts for a few months. They plan on soliciting feedback from customers to figure out which additional features would be of most interest in the future. So how can you try this out? Buy a ticket on flight 641 next Tuesday. Otherwise, it’s luck of the draw, and your chances are pretty slim of actually getting onboard.

As I mentioned above, the test is on only one airplane right now. The plane, N651JB, was delivered in January of this year as “I’m Having a Blue Moment,” but it will now be reborn as “BetaBlue.” Apparently, this aircraft will be the testbed for all their future tech testing onboard. In other words, you want to be on this plane.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to find out if you’re on this plane until you show up at the airport. I know they can’t tell you very far in advance how a plane will be routed, but it would be nice if you could find out before you leave your home for the airport. They don’t have plans to do that, so you’ll just have to enjoy the surprise. They did tell me that they will try to keep the plane on long haul routes so that customers can get the most benefit. Oh, and the coverage is roughly similar to what you get with LiveTV. It uses 114 cellular towers across the country, so only when the plane is overwater or in foreign airspace is it unlikely to work.

As for future installation on the rest of the fleet, there are no solid plans. If this goes well, they’ll look at expanding it. But there aren’t any guarantees at this point.

So will we be able to start surfing the web with full functionality onboard anytime soon? No way. They just don’t have the bandwidth to allow people to even open attachments let alone stream video. They’re just focusing on email and IM, but they’re going to be experimenting with anything else they can make work at the request of customers.

Practically, this isn’t a big deal for me, because I don’t know how long my Yahoo Mail would keep me entertained. That being said, it’s an important step. This is the first time we’ve seen wi-fi on an airplane, and that should be cause for celebration. So, nice step, JetBlue. I look forward to seeing more robust options evolve over time.

United Asking for Volunteers Online

CF — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:56:02 +0000

Though I obviously like it better when my fiancée is here in town, it seems to be much better for my blog when she’s traveling. Last time, it was the infamous United dinner roll debacle. This time, there was gum all over the tray table and the seatback pocket. Yep, it was United, and they still haven’t figured out how to clean their planes. But I’m in a good mood, so let’s focus on something positive.

When she went to check-in online last night for her flight today, she was shown this message:

I don’t know how long United has been doing this, but it’s a great idea. Think about it. When you’re already through security, sitting at the gate, you really don’t want to give up your seat. But in the past, that’s the only place they’ve tried to get volunteers when the flight is oversold.

Now think about when you’re sitting at home, the day before your flight. There’s a much better chance you’d be willing to just go on a later flight in exchange for a free ticket if you didn’t have to deal with the airport experience at all until your new flight time. It’s a win-win in most situations, but not all.

I assume United only wants to use this on flights that are significantly oversold. See, if it’s only oversold by a couple of seats, there’s a good chance there will be enough no-shows that they won’t need volunteers at all. So, if they take volunteers that far in advance, it may end up just being an unnecessary cost for the airline. Still, I would think that the customer service benefits and the ability to get more volunteers would make this worthwhile. Nice work, United.

CORRECTION 11/12 @ 920p: Thank you AS and Jonathan Reed (look down in the comments section), for pointing out that I completely misinterpreted this one. This just puts you on the list and you still have to go to your original gate and wait. So, it’s helpful for United, but it does just about nothing for the passengers. Bummer.

A Standard for Mobile Check-In

CF — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:58:29 +0000

I mentioned last month that Air Canada had began allowing customers to check-in using their mobile phone. (Sadly it didn’t work for me, but that’ll be in my trip report later on.) Now, IATA has come out with a standard barcode that will be used on all paper boarding passes as well as mobile phones. Here is what the boarding pass would look like:

I know - one of the most exciting pictures you’ve ever seen, right? Yeah, right. But as long as this bar code is displayed on your mobile phone, you’ll eventually be able to check in for any airline from your phone.

Right now, there are three barcodes that are used in different parts of the world. You can liken that to the fight between HD-DVD and BlueRay. Nobody knows which one to buy because we don’t know which one will survive. Well, with the new standard determined, that means that airlines and airports can start developing their applications without fear that they’ll become obsolete.

IATA wants to have a bar code on every boarding pass by 2010, but of course that doesn’t mean everyone will have mobile check-in by then. It just makes it more likely.

UPDATE 10/17 @ 755a: Ok, so I guess I was wrong here. The boarding pass barcode standard came out 2 years ago. They’ve just now decided on the mobile standard, so I guess my picture is wrong. Oops!

Air Canada Brings Your Boarding Pass To Your Mobile Phone

CF — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:54:47 +0000

In another, “Why is the US so far behind?” moment, Air Canada announced last week that you can now go straight to the gate without a paper boarding pass. Just check in on your mobile phone and show the barcode on the screen to the gate agent for boarding. How cool.

The way it works is pretty simple. You go to the Air Canada mobile site on your phone and check in for your flight just like you would online. They then send you two SMS messages - one with your flight info and another with a link to your boarding pass. Click the link and it will open the image of a barcode in your mobile browser. You can use that to get through security. Then the gate agent will scan it and you can board the plane without a single piece of paper.

Of course, there are restrictions on where you can use this. You may not be surprised to find out that you can’t use this on US flights. Nope. Only flights within Canada or flights departing from Canada and going to any other country as long as it isn’t the US. I’m sure there’s some silly TSA restriction preventing this from happening, and that’s unfortunate. I can’t see why this is any different than a regular boarding pass except that this version saves trees.

Now, Air Canada isn’t the first to do this, but I believe they’re doing it best right now. A company called Mobiqa (image at left) has something similar that will be used by Nok Air of Thailand and Spanair of Spain. The way Mobiqa works is a bit different. A big negative is that you have to check in online. You can’t use your phone. But once you’re checked in, they send you an MMS message with the boarding pass. That’s easier than having to click on a link, but not being able to check in using the phone is a big downfall. This is also the way WestJet does it. (Updated 9/25 @ 1019a)

The good news for me is that I’m flying Air Canada in a couple weeks from Canada to Europe, so I am hoping I’ll be able to try this out. I’ll report back and let you know how it goes.