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Friday, August 08, 2008

Making a Plane Reservation on AA.com

When you make a reservation on AA.com, selecting seats IS NOT part of the timeline.

Making a Plane Reservation: Seats? Can I get some seats here?

The computer picks seats for you, then drops you on a payment screen. Weird.

On other sites like JetBlue, choosing seats is part of the process.
Note: I'd normally fly JetBlue to San Jose, but they aren't flying there any more starting in September. :-( I'm heading out to Streaming Media West.

I'll be running a session on Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks with Bhaskar Roy from Qik and Mac Haot from Mogulus.
I needed help figuring out how to select seats.

Making a Plane Reservation: Need Help?

So I clicked the Click to Talk button. This window popped up:

Making a Plane Reservation: Call me Right Now!

After entering in my information, I selected Call Me "Right Now."

When I clicked talk, my phone rang.

Very cool.

The help person explained it to me.

At this point in the timeline, you need to click the HOLD button, at the bottom of the page to hold your reservation, THEN go back in to edit it by clicking SELECT to select your seats.

Making a Plane Reservation: Seat Selection

Poor user interface. They should add seat selection to the timeline, or at least explain on the page that you need to put your reservation on HOLD in order to choose seats.

I asked her why they did it this way. She explained the you either have to reserve a reservation first OR pay for it before you can select seats.

Makes no sense to me. I want to have the seat selection process be part of both my purchase decision and buying process.

To close out this happy story I noticed that there was an option to upgrade seats with points. So I checked my point balance online.

Making a Plane Reservation: View My Miles

They all expired last year. D'oh.

Update:
You can VIEW seats on Step 1. I missed it. See the details here:

Making a Plane Reservation on AA.com: You Can View Seats