This Christmas season I flew back to Vancouver to visit family. I used up the last of my points to fly business class so I could bring extra luggage (for presents). While I must compliment Air Canada on their lounges, I have to say that the web site and baggage handling (at Ottawa in particular) leave a LOT to be desired.
The day I departed from Vancouver, there was some kind of general failure of computer systems at YVR blocking all Web Check-in capability (or at least, that’s the “official” story). Now this was the day AFTER the Nigerian terrorist decided to set his pants on fire on a US airplane, so the “issue” may have been some kind of emergency security upgrade. That being said, I was on my way to the airport when I got word that web-check-in might now be available. I tried it from my Blackberry - an 8310 Curve running OS 4.5. (No, I was NOT driving while doing this).
Now, yes, I don’t have latest model of Blackberry, and a slightly older OS, but there are still TONS of 8300 series devices out there and 4.5 is still a very active OS. You’d think an airline, of all companies, would have their websites optimized to serve business travellers, and mobile devices especially. Well Air Canada isn’t one of them. Sure, the page rendered, (when so many of them don’t), but no matter what I tried, it kept asking me to re-enter my departure city. You see, on desktop, it has one of those javascripted look-ups that offers you the city when you’ve typed a few letters. Lord knows what value it inserts, but typing “Vancouver”, and “YVR” and “Vancouver YVR” and several other variants did not get me past the “please enter your departure city” error on my Blackberry. To add insult to injury, clicking on the “help” link beneath that field throws a Javascript error, so I had NO idea what format it expected the city to be in. (Hint to Air Canada: If nothing else, put the same logic on the server that you have in Javascript and re-render the page with the best guess/first result). I gave up and checked in at the counter when I got to the airport. I didn’t really want to carry around a paper boarding pass, but they gave me no choice. That was frustration number 1. Frustration number 2 is one that I have experienced on any Flights into Ottawa on Air Canada in recent memory.
I swear, that at the Ottawa terminal, Air Canada has ONE baggage handler, and his right arm is broken. That can be the ONLY excuse why my priority checked bags took an HOUR to get to the baggage carousel. I have NOT received my bags at Ottawa International Airport, priority tagged or otherwise, in less than 45 minutes. When possible, I try to avoid checked bags for this very reason. When I spoke to someone at the baggage counter (after 45 minutes of waiting), his excuse was that they had 3 flights come in at the same time.
Oh. My. God. THREE. Three whole flights. Heaven Forfend! At a BRAND NEW international airport, with all new upgraded facilities. And they can’t figure out how to get the bags off in less than an hour? They don’t have scheduling systems for staffing? Let me tell you, that when I arrived, it was our flight and one from Calgary listed on the carousel. I don’t know where this mystical third flight was. And by the sounds of it, several of the Calgary people didn’t get their bags after waiting an hour. Even worse, the bags that DID come off, TRICKLED off… one every 30 seconds or so, and then whole minutes would go by with NO bags, and then a trickle and then 10 minutes or more of no bags and the conveyor stopping entirely. People were livid. The flight got in at 12:15, and I didn’t get my bags till 1:15, and there were STILL bags coming off the carousel when I left. Utterly unacceptable.
I don’t know what is going on with Air Canada at Ottawa International, but they need to *fix* the baggage handling problem. And they need to properly test their website components on Blackberry devices. It isn’t that hard. I managed delivery of a very high traffic site that renders and functions on every type of Blackberry, (and even renders *differently* if you have a newer high-res device), plus on 4 different desktop browsers (with a different, flash/ajax/etc desktop-optimized view). And we delivered it with a team of 3 developers and 1 QA person. It’s not rocket science. KNOW your audience. DESIGN for mobile. TEST your site with simulators if you cannot afford real devices - RIM provides the simulators for free. It’s just good business.