US Airways debuts improved, easier-to-use Web site
Dawn Gilbertson
The Arizona Republic
May 26, 2006 12:00 AM
One of the first things America West executives heard from US Airways travelers after the airlines' merger last year was a plea to ditch US Airways' Web site.
It was hard to navigate, with flights awkwardly displayed and options hard to decipher. The numbers bore it out: just 13 percent of US Airways' ticket sales came via usairways.com, compared with 31 percent at America West.
America West's conversion rate, the folks who booked rather than just looked, was 75 percent higher than US Airways' despite a lot more visitors to the site.
"People would get there and they would get frustrated with the process and then they'd quit," said Travis Christ, vice president of sales and marketing for the new US Airways.
The airline listened and this week quietly debuted the new usairways.com. It replaces americawest.com and the old usairways.com and is based on the former America West Web site. Visitors to the old sites are redirected to the new site, which has the temporary address of www2.usairways.com/awa.
The switch to a single Web site and, in tandem, a single frequent-flier program, marks a key merger milestone and erases two high-profile pieces of the home-grown America West. Americawest.com and FlightFund, its longtime frequent-flier program, are no more. Aside from repainting the old America West's planes, these are the biggest changes customers will see as a result of the merger.
The new Web site includes some features of the US Airways site, including the ability to type in a city name or airport code for flights instead of having to scroll down a long list of cities served, as you did at americawest.com. And for the first time since the merger, travelers will be able to book America West and US Airways-operated flights in one place.
The Tempe-based airline is not hawking the changes to travelers yet because it wants to shake out the glitches over the next couple of weeks.
The early reaction on the new usairways.com has been mixed, though no major problems have surfaced, and the company says the launch could not have gone much better.
The biggest glitch hit Monday, the first business day of the new site, when about half of the visitors to the site received messages that the airline didn't fly to the cities they were trying to book. The problem was restored that afternoon, Christ said.
Frequent fliers reported problems logging into their mileage accounts, missing mileage, uncombined mileage from the two airlines, error messages and more.
Christ says the mileage discrepancies were expected because they had to have a mileage cutoff date before the switchover took place. Everything on that front should be up to date in a couple of weeks, Christ said.
Fred Donatucci, a Honeywell program manager who commutes between Phoenix and his home in Los Angeles once or twice a week, noticed a lot of glitches early in the week. He said his biggest problem was checking in online for a flight on Sunday, the first day of the new Web site.
At first, he was told him he was randomly selected to check in at the airport instead of online. Then it allowed him to check in but lost his preassigned seat.
"I had to call them," he said. "They ended up fixing it pretty well."
Donatucci works in Honeywell's information technology department and said he has sympathy for any company's computer challenges. Still, he said US Airways likely launched the new site a tad early.
"I think they probably could have used another week or so," he said. "Even better, it seems like some of the issues they had would have been resolved easily if they had involved more people outside the company" in a beta test.
This is the first airline merged in the era of big Internet sales. When American Airlines scooped up bankrupt TWA in 2001, Internet sales were not yet a major financial force at many airlines.
Bookings at airlines' Web sites have soared since then, reaching as high as 65 percent at online pioneer Southwest Airlines.
Airlines want to drive as many sales there as possible because it's the cheapest method of selling tickets. There are no booking fees to pay the giant computer reservation systems used by traditional and online travel agencies.
Christ said US Airways hopes it can get the combined airline to near America West's percentage of Internet sales within six months since the site is easier to book on.
"If we can get the same recapture rate of those customers who go ahead and buy now (at America West), we're going to see a great revenue lift and a great cost savings," he said.
The changeover wasn't quick or easy. The airlines' Web site operations were night and day. America West ran its site in-house, giving it a major overhaul before the merger, while US Airways outsourced its Web site to save money.
Then there's the minor little problem of Byzantine airline pricing, change policies, cancellations, upgrades and more. There are easily millions of combinations of reservations and changes that people can make, Christ said.
"Airline Web sites are about as complicated a retail Web site as you can possibly have," he said.
"You think of Amazon.com as a fancy retail site, and they do a lot of great things, but theirs is very simple compared to what we have to do."
Airlines have to hook into the reservation systems, the airport operations (for flight status) and their frequent-flier programs, a vast database on its own.
Jon Ryder, an America West frequent flier with nearly 500,000 miles in his account, said he hasn't encountered any glitches this week. His miles weren't combined Sunday but they were by Monday.
The Phoenix consultant, whose firm RWI Mediacom offers services including Web site hosting, gets a little irritated by those who complain about early problems with the site because some aren't known until the switchover occurs.
"It's unrealistic for people to say, 'Yeah, they should have this 100 percent before you go live,' " he said. "Microsoft doesn't get everything 100 percent."