What Were They Thinking 11

Posted: October 25, 2011 | Categories: Mobile Development, What Were They Thinking

US Airways is such a technology unsavvy airline. I've been signed up for alerts for a long time now, but they just refuse to alert me when it's time to check in for example. Their day of travel alerts are next to useless as well (see Figure 1). They're notifying me that my flight is expected to be on time, but they refuse to tell me what gate the flight is scheduled to depart from.

Figure 1

If I already have my boarding pass (which I did) and I'm heading to the airport, many airlines leave out of multiple terminals, so how am I supposed to know which terminal I'm supposed to be dropped off at?

Charlotte has 4 terminals where US Air flights come in and out of. For my morning flight, I'd already checked in and didn't have a bag to check, so I just walked into the airport and headed through security. Once I got inside, I started looking for my gate and of course the first location I went to, all of the screens were blank. With 4 terminals as viable options for me, I was in a pickle – fortunately I was able to find a bank of monitors that worked and quickly learned my flight was leaving out of a faraway terminal, but if US Air cared enough about me, they would have told me before I got to the airport which terminal I needed to go to. I understand that the gate might change, but why not tell at least what you know today then let me know, via another email, if the gate does change down the line?

This truly makes no sense to me – you have the data, I'm your customer and you know I'm interested in the data, why not share it with me?

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Header image: Photo by ilgmyzin on Unsplash.