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The new VirginAmerica.com

static.virginamerica.com

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Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#121

Post by gone35 »

duderific wrote: post #78
zaroth wrote: post #47

Someone else was wondering if this was a parody, I think they might be right. There is so much funky with this, it does feel only half serious. For me it started with 'Book from San Francisco'. I clicked on the 'Boston' button, and it shows this weird top status-bar drop down thing which flashes the message: 'Going to "Hahvahd," perchance?'. What? Then the browser starts, a little bit too slowly, scrolling itself dow…

I think they took "mobile first" to the extreme, and disregarded desktop. I imagine that giant calendar is pretty cool on an iPad. It's not really responsive design if you optimize only for devices and not for desktop as well.

Except it is just as awful, if not even worse, on Safari on iPad. At least for me, scrolling is broken and it crashes constantly.

I honestly don't understand how website trends can devolve so rapidly and radically. This blunder may well end up costing them millions of dollars in missed sales.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#123

Post by nailer »

Tried to scroll down, nothing happened, then it scrolled way too far, then my browser was unresponsive and I had to kill it. iPad, iOS 7.

Edit: tried a second time and slowed down my scrolling to get the site to work. 'get Booking' doesn't work.

Like the folding boarding pass though.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#124

Post by nailer »

qmr wrote: post #118

This is horrible and broken. Real information replaced with "flat" design and stupid hip made up words like "fun-erer". No javascript: http://i.imgur.com/8HkKyZx.png There is a delay of at least 100ms scrolling up and down between pages. I would guess 150ms. I do not see any obvious way of changing this, and the scroll bars are hidden. What if I need to change something at the top of the page? I also managed to break…

Accessible browsers run Javascript, and have for some time. You may have a point about CSS though.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#125

Post by personlurking »

alister wrote: post #91
robertnealan wrote: post #87

From a design perspective this is one of the most beautiful airline booking designs I've ever seen, but from a usability perspective it might just be the worst (save for maybe RyanAir). The cities being laid out in a grid looks nice but is ultimately far more difficult to understand then just looking at an alphabetical list in a dropdown. Auto-picking your departure city based on your current location is admittedly a…

Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…

Even with a CPF, the document needed (which isn't excessively hard to get if you're a foreigner in Brazil), there's another problem...using a US card to pay. Unless they've changed their ways in the last few years it's still near impossible to pay on any Brazilian airline site or any Kayak-like site in Brazil with an American debit card with Visa or Mastercard symbol.

Last time I had to book at SDU (Rio airport), I needed to take most of my day to go to the airport, wait in long lines and buy the ticket physically, with cash or (get this) by card! This was a 5-6h process including public transport (and I actually lived 10m away by car at the time).

___

At the risk of getting too off-topic (which I may have already done above), here's another recent public transport problem, when bus drivers went on strike in Sao Paulo, this is what happened on the metro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXycKeyDKXk

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#126

Post by orbitingpluto »

I thought the option to select an avatar in the seating layout was an interesting feature: so the gregarious can sit with the gregarious, the droolers with the droolers, and the taciturn with the taciturn. Selecting a female gender would probably guarantee you don't get an empty seat next to you however...

But of course most of these booking sites actually hide pricing information until you tell them exactly when and where you want to fly. You won't find out that you can save some money by taking a two leg obscure routing or flying the day before.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#127

Post by mcrider »

alister wrote: post #91
robertnealan wrote: post #87

From a design perspective this is one of the most beautiful airline booking designs I've ever seen, but from a usability perspective it might just be the worst (save for maybe RyanAir). The cities being laid out in a grid looks nice but is ultimately far more difficult to understand then just looking at an alphabetical list in a dropdown. Auto-picking your departure city based on your current location is admittedly a…

Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…

As someone currently helping to build an airline website, I'll just point out that the booking process, and other processes concerning the interaction with actual flight data, are controlled by a few organizations (global distribution systems) that have access to this data and our hampered with bureaucratic workflows. The airline itself might be able to hire great designers and developers to build out the informational side of their site, but the actual booking process has to contend with a slew of regulations (and IMO are poorly run and horribly old school) to connect customers to booking and seat picking services. It is very hard to innovate in this area.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#128

Post by alister »

mcrider wrote: post #127
alister wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…

As someone currently helping to build an airline website, I'll just point out that the booking process, and other processes concerning the interaction with actual flight data, are controlled by a few organizations (global distribution systems) that have access to this data and our hampered with bureaucratic workflows. The airline itself might be able to hire great designers and developers to build out the information…

Sure, external constraints aren't always apparent to the public. But in this particular case, the Brazilian airlines can't claim that because visitors to Brazil can buy airline tickets through other interfaces (from travel agents or at airline ticket counters [1]). So their back-end systems are perfectly capable of selling tickets without demanding a Brazilian identity number (the CPF number). This problem exists only with their web interface.

[1] http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Booking_a_domestic_fl...

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#129

Post by mprovost »

alister wrote: post #91
robertnealan wrote: post #87

From a design perspective this is one of the most beautiful airline booking designs I've ever seen, but from a usability perspective it might just be the worst (save for maybe RyanAir). The cities being laid out in a grid looks nice but is ultimately far more difficult to understand then just looking at an alphabetical list in a dropdown. Auto-picking your departure city based on your current location is admittedly a…

Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…

I ran into this a few years ago and had to buy tickets at a travel agent. What I never understood was, why all of these sites have English versions available in the first place? They obviously went through the effort to translate the site but then ultimately you can't buy tickets unless you're Brazilian in which case you don't need an English site.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#130

Post by [deleted] »

qqg3 wrote: post #74
jperras wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a post a few years ago that detailed many of the archaic and somewhat obscure requirements that boarding passes must have: http://blog.timoni.org/post/318322031/a-practical-boarding-p... It seems as though Virgin America can bypass many of these because there are no (?) international flights. The original boarding pass redesign post, to which the above was a rebuttal: http://passfail.squarespace.com/ Edit:…

No, they bypassed it because that is the print-at-home boarding pass design...

[deleted]
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