reDesign

May 29, 2009

Online at 36,000 feet: trying Gogo WiFi on board

Filed under: airlines, travel, twitter — Rocky Agrawal @ 8:22 am

I tried inflight WiFi last week aboard Virgin America. The day I flew happened to be the same day Virgin became the first U.S. airline to offer Internet access across its entire fleet. I live tweeted and uploaded pictures to flickr inflight.

Richard Branson looks serene hereVirgin uses GoGo, which is also available on select Delta, AirTran and American flights. United will be adding it on its p.s. flights between JFK and San Francisco/Los Angeles this summer.

The system worked as advertised: easy to use and reasonably fast. Set up was similar to signing up for a paid hotspot on the ground; I entered my credit card and was online in a minute or so. It costs $9.95 for flights under 3 hours and $12.95 for longer flights.

Speed was equivalent to a lower-tier U.S. home broadband connection. At 903 Kb/s down and 337 Kb/s up, it easily outperformed my 3G iPhone, both on speed and service availability.

From a technology standpoint it’s great. But do I really want it?

I’m really torn on that. I loved being able to chat with friends, check mail and update Twitter on my flight. The answer will really depend on what it does to the social contract we have with our fellow passengers and employers.

On the passenger front, will Internet access serve as a great adult pacifier or introduce more obnoxiousness? It’s easy to see people getting wrapped up in online activities and complaining less. The opposite is equally likely: a friend complained that a passenger near him on a transcontinental redeye was playing a voice-based game with others online. (Virgin policies prohibit using voice services; I didn’t get a chance to see how many of them, if any, are actually blocked.)

On the employer front, what will expecations be for inflight WiFi? I’ve used my flight time to work on presentations, edit pictures, write blog posts (this post was written on a United non-WiFi flight), stare out the window and contemplate life. Having a big block of time without a lot of distractions can be very productive; some of my best product ideas have been formulated on a plane. Having the option to connect is great, but I don’t think I’d like being required to be online the whole time.

May 4, 2009

A wow experience from United Airlines. Wow.

Filed under: airlines, customer service, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 10:16 pm

It’s rare these days that a company impresses with customer service. It’s even rarer when that company is an airline, especially an American airline. That’s the experience I had last week when I was flying home from New Orleans on United Airlines.

It started out pretty awful. A few hours before my flight I received a text message that my flight was delayed. Then another. By the time I arrived at the airport, my originating flight had been delayed more than two hours, ensuring that I’d miss my connecting flight in Denver. As it got close to the new departure time, we were told that there was a mechanical issue. After a string of “we’re waiting for an update” announcements, we finally boarded three hours later when a new plane arrived.

Based on experience, I was braced for the worst when I arrived in Denver: a 90 minute wait for a harried customer service rep who would look for every excuse to not put me up for the night. Before leaving New Orleans, I’d tweeted “United already knows who will misconnect. What are the odds they’ll be proactive and have hotel vouchers waiting?” I would’ve placed them at 1000:1, best case.

But that’s exactly what happened. After we landed the gate agent came on board and announced that they had prepared packets with hotel and meal vouchers for everyone who was stranded. Three people were staffing the desk, despite the fact that we arrived around 2 a.m. They were polite and directed us to the hotel shuttles.

Within 20 minutes of landing in San Francisco the next day, there was an apology in my email box for the inconvenience. A link in the email invited me to select from a list of appreciation items, including a $250 travel certificate.

The immediacy and the proactive nature of the response made a very positive impression. It’s great to see companies using IT in this way.

August 31, 2008

The ad is a lie

Filed under: advertising, airlines, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:18 pm

While watching the Olympics, I was struck by a gorgeous animated ad. A lobster conducts an orchestra of other sea creatures playing Gershwin. As soon as I recognized Rhapsody in Blue, I knew it had to be a United Airlines commercial.

The beautiful ad is in stark contrast with the product being advertised. We all expect exaggeration in advertising, but for the most part the product doesn’t even exist. I’m not talking about cramped seats or the fees for everything but using the toilet; the ad is one of several new commercials for United’s new international first and business class.

United’s premium products have significantly lagged their competitors, especially when compared with foreign competitors. Virgin’s and British’s business classes are much nicer than United’s first. United’s new product is a significant step forward.

The problem is that most of United’s international fleet hasn’t been reconfigured for the new product. If you buy the advertised product, chances are you’ll get the older, vastly inferior product. According to the FlyerGuide Wiki, only 11% of the fleet has been reconfigured:

Completed aircraft: 11 out of 96
Completed B747-400s: 4 out of 29
Completed B767-300s: 7 out of 21
Completed B777-200s: 0 out of 46

Good luck getting the 180-degree flat bed seats they talk about in the Butterfly and Moondust ads. There is no way to ensure that you’ll get the new product. Veteran frequent fliers play guessing games on FlyerTalk’s United forums. While you can improve your odds based on picking the routes or studying United.com seatmaps you’ll only know for sure when you step on the plane. There is a way to ensure that you don’t get the new product: buy a business class seat on a 777. None of those have been converted.

United deserves credit for making the ads easily available online, something more companies should do. The clip of the Heart commercial includes a “making of” commentary by Dennis Cary, United’s SVP of Marketing and behind the scenes interviews with the artists.

As art, the ads are some of the most creative and visually engaging ads I’ve seen; they’re downright stunning when viewed in HD. If they do their job and gets people on United’s planes, there’s a really good chance they won’t be crossing the oceans on United again.

Desi shoutout: According to United’s description, Moondust was animated by an Indian. “Ishu Patel, an Indian-born and Canadian-based animator, used his world-renowned back-lit technique in which a thin layer of plastic modeling clay is applied to a glass plate that has a 1000-watt light positioned beneath it and an animation camera above it.”

See also:

May 18, 2008

Occasional reader – Airport security, future of journalism, working with Yahoo!

Filed under: airlines, journalism, media, newspapers, reader, social networking, travel, web 2, web 2.0, weekly reader, yahoo — Rocky Agrawal @ 5:17 pm

Some interesting reads from the past couple of weeks:

  • The Airport Security Follies (New York Times blog) – Pilot Patrick Smith takes a look at the idiocy of our airport screening processes. Smith argues (and I fully agree) that airport security is a charade designed to persuade people that the government is doing something, when in reality most of those measures have zero impact on safety. Part of the reason we tolerate this is that those who are most impacted by this idiocy are a small fraction of the population: pilots, flight attendants and very frequent fliers. Even the media largely ignore it, despite the billions in lost productivity. (This piece didn’t run in the paper.)
    When they do cover it, it’s for the theatrics: It never fails that when an idiotic measure is announced that the local TV news has a grandma who flies twice a year talking about how she’s willing to fly naked if that would improve security. The media love scare stories because they get people to watch. A CNN promo running this weekend intones “What if a hurricane hits, gas skyrockets to $10 a gallon and everything collapses?”
    Comment #3 to the entry, from another pilot, is also worth reading. via Adam Lasnik
  • So far, so good for Midway Airport’s new screening system (Chicago Tribune) – I was stuck in the metal detector line at SFO last week behind a guy who tried to go through wearing a bulky sweatshirt, a backpack and a baby. I’ve long wondered why airports don’t offer beginner, advanced and expert lanes. Chicago’s Midway now has security screening lines that uses ski resort-style lane designations to sort travelers. In theory, it would also benefit inexperienced travelers and families: “Shannon Spicer, who was traveling with her 2-year-old son, Liam, said she liked being able to take her time without other travelers breathing down her neck.” Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal reports similar signs at Cincinnati’s airport aren’t working well: “The TSA agent at the checkpoint said the signs look nice but they don’t help much. Everybody, she said, thinks they’re experts.” At least there are still the elite security lines at hub airports.
  • The Future (We Hope) of Journalism (Poynter Online) – Former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll offers his take on the transition from lucrative virtual monopolies to rapidly shrinking competitors. Like many in the old media, Carroll takes potshots at bloggers: “Although blogs have contributed much to the national discussion, they offer only a rare flash of original reporting. For fresh information, the blogs remain deeply dependent on the old media, which they simultaneously deplore and utilize extensively.” Never mind that bloggers were instrumental in holding the old guard accountable in cases like Dan Rather’s erroneous National Guard story and the L.A. Times’ very similar fiasco about an assault on Tupac Shakur. Or that journalists frequently fill air time and ink by interviewing bloggers like Michelle Leder of footnoted.org. Or that the old media are “deeply dependent” on press releases and political operatives.
  • Doing Business with the Semi-Permeable Corporation (Greg Cohn’s blog) – Blogs and social networks have made it much easier to reach out to key decision makers in large corporations. But they haven’t erased the rules of business. Yahoo’s Greg Cohn provides a look at the good and the bad of openness in a large public corporation.

August 10, 2007

Virgin America takes to the skies; Chron doesn’t

Filed under: airlines, journalism, media, newspapers, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:51 am

Virgin America planeWednesday marked the inaugural flights of Virgin America, a new low-cost airline based in San Francisco. Virgin America is currently flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles and New York. This fall it will add flights to Las Vegas and Washington Dulles.

From all accounts, Virgin America is setting a new standard in airline amenities. (See some of my earlier coverage on Virgin America.) Many of Virgin’s amenities are especially appealing to geeks. The geek bible, Engadget, provides detailed coverage of the maiden flight from JFK to SFO. Their coverage includes 136 pictures.

WIRED also provides detailed coverage with additional photos.

Engadget and WIRED both had reporters on the inaugural flights. Engadget flew from New York and paid for the flight; WIRED flew from Los Angeles and took a freebie.

Based on the coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, it doesn’t look like it had a reporter on either flight. It ran a piece with two staff photos and a Reuters photo from New York and an AP photo from SFO (!).

This is a huge business story for San Francisco and the Bay Area. The airline has added 500 employees (most based in the Bay Area) and expects to grow to 5,000. Yet the Chron got beat out by a gadget blog and a WIRED blog. Heck, I even considered taking the LAX flight and paying the whopping $44 out of my own pocket. (I couldn’t get the schedule to work out.)

I was at a panel discussion Thursday night sponsored by the Social Media Club featuring Kevin Rose of Digg, Evan Hansen of WIRED and Chris Tolles of Topix. The audience consisted of many in the old media who expressed worry about new-media types stealing their content. If they’re going to get beat like this, they won’t have to worry about that for too long.

August 2, 2007

Can an airline really be this inept?

Filed under: airlines, customer service, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 3:24 pm

U.S. Airways logoEvery couple of months, U.S. Airways sends out an email describing the progress on their computer systems. As with most large-scale systems projects, they’re behind. The self-effacing emails try to reassure customers that the airline really cares. Here’s an excerpt from June:

Welcome again to the latest edition of the Merger Update, where we provide the plain English scoop on issues important to you, our frequent travelers. No corporate double speak; just a rundown of details on the most pressing questions of the day.

So, first things first. You may be weary of us apologizing for the tough times we had this spring due to the migration of our reservations system, but here it is: We sincerely apologize for the numerous failures. After a pretty nice start to the merger we’ve learned some tough lessons through all this and received some very helpful advice from many of you, some of which we’re applying already and some of which is unprintable. So thank you for sticking with us as we climb back on the horse.

OK, enough groveling, here’s what we’ve got…

I hadn’t really paid much attention to the emails. But they stuck in my head last night. As I mentioned earlier, I spent seven hours at National Airport on Sunday, partly because of U.S. Airways ill-considered policy of not allowing phone agents to help with day-of-flight issues. Last night I called U.S. Airways to rebook my trip.

When I explained what I wanted to do, the agent replied “You were a no show.” This despite the fact that I twice had my boarding pass scanned and actually sat on the plane. While she offered to waive the $100 change fee, she wanted to charge an extra $100 for the difference in fare. When I said that I wanted a refund because my flight was canceled, she put me on hold while she contacted a supervisor. (Airlines try to hide the fact that you are entitled to a refund if they cancel your flight.)

Her supervisor comes on the line and tells me that she can’t find any record of my flight being canceled and that my record said that I was a no show. So she couldn’t do anything for me.

How does an airline not know that they didn’t operate a flight? That the plane sat on the tarmac for 6 hours? That they canceled a good portion of their schedule that day? Fortunately I had thought ahead about the possibility and printed the Web flight status showing the cancellation when I got home on Sunday. I faxed that to her while still on the phone.

A few minutes later she comes back on the line slurping her drink and grumpily proceeds to rebook my flight for free. No apologies.

Next week, I’ll be taking pictures every time I sit on one of their planes.

July 30, 2007

Rocky’s fun-filled day at the airport

Filed under: airlines, customer service, facebook, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 9:07 am

n589258318_184192_4195Yesterday was my travel day from hell.

I arrived at National Airport around 11 to catch a noon flight to Philadelphia. Because of a ground stop at Philadelphia they pushed back the flight to 12:45. We boarded the bus toward the commuter plane. When we arrived at the plane, I noticed that the door was still closed. Due to lightning around National, the ramp was closed and the bus headed back to the terminal.

In the terminal it was an endless string of “another 45 minutes” or no communication at all. Flights to and from cities up and down the East Coast were canceled or delayed.

While I can’t blame U.S. Airways for the weather, I can blame them for ill-considered policies that exacerbate the delays and make their ground staff work a lot harder than they need to. Unlike some other airlines, U.S. Airways phone agents can’t make changes for customers unless their flights have actually been canceled. As a result, you have 3 or 4 agents at the airport dealing with a line of 50-60 people who need to make new plans.

This is never an easy process on bad weather days because it can take 5 minutes or more per passenger to review later flights, alternate airports and rebook. This is in addition to dealing with the few airplanes that are coming and going. Under all this pressure, the agents aren’t able to look at all the options. I called my brother and was able to find other flights, but I couldn’t get anyone to book them for me. By the time I got to the front of the line, those flights had left.

On United, I’ve been able to call reservations while standing in line and get rebooked on alternate flights when it looked likely that I was going to miss my connection. Instead of concentrating all the work at one gate at the airport, United smartly distributes that work. United is now adding kiosks on their concourses that allow customers to rebook themselves. It saves United money and customers can see their options.

Around 5 p.m., we got the go ahead to re-board the Philadelphia flight. This time, we got off the bus and on the plane. A few minutes after boarding, I see the bus return and open its doors. About the same time the pilot comes out of the cockpit and says dispatch is canceling the flight, but he’s trying to talk them out of it before the bus comes back. Too late.

The one good thing about my seven hours at National was that I got to spend quality time with Facebook Mobile, updating my status, checking up on what friends were up to, and uploading pictures and my first mobile videos. It’s among the best mobile-Web integrations I’ve seen yet. More on that later.

My fruitless trip to DCA, as recorded on Facebook

July 20, 2007

Virgin America set for takeoff

Filed under: airlines, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 4:17 pm

Virgin America logoVirgin America, a new low-cost carrier based in San Francisco, is set for an Aug. 8 takeoff. The carrier has faced some turbulent skies due in part to its partial ownership by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Initial routes are San Francisco to New York’s JFK and LAX, with additional service from San Francisco to Las Vegas and Washington Dulles planned. Flights from LAX to Las Vegas (August) and Washington Dulles (October) are also planned.

Virgin America is an airline that any technologist will love. See my entry on the technology that Virgin America offers, including a high-end open source entertainment system, live DirecTV, a real power plug (no adapter required) at every seat and inflight Internet access. You can also chat with others on the airplane with seat-to-seat messaging. The in-flight entertainment system offers so many features, it’s the first airline I know of that publishes an acceptable use policy on its Web site.

Initial pricing is cheap with SFO-LAX priced at $44 one way and SFO-JFK at $139. (No roundtrip purchase required.) First class is also offered, at modest prices. A first class ticket from Dulles to San Francisco is $389. A comparable ticket on United is more than $800. I should say “comparable,” because Virgin America offers much more legroom with 55″ seat pitch and massaging seats.

It’s no coincidence that Virgin has chosen routes full of tech savvy travelers. This is likely to put a lot of pressure on United and jetBlue, which offer a lot of service on these routes. Ordinarily, giants like United compete by flooding the market with low-priced seats. The technological advantage may be harder to overcome.

Virgin’s biggest obstacle may be the corporate travel managers who hold back the stampede of travelers who want to fly their airline.

July 7, 2007

Google Maps on jetBlue

Filed under: airlines, google, maps, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 1:13 pm

I recently had the chance to see the Google Maps on jetBlue that I wrote about earlier.

Google Maps on jetBlue

The maps are pretty simple; no satellite views or other cool Google features. They rotate among zoom levels. (My photostream has other examples.) There’s also a promo encouraging you to use Google Maps on the ground.

There are more interesting inflight map experiences. Here’s a YouTube video of Airshow 4200 from Air New Zealand. Most of the airlines I’ve flown use Airshow software, but I haven’t seen this version.

I do have to be a little concerned when the company’s marketing brochure incorrectly identifies Venice.

Airshow oops

April 20, 2007

Virgin America planes at SFO

Filed under: airlines, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 4:51 pm

Virgin America logoAs I was taking off from SFO yesterday, I noticed the Virgin logo on three smaller airplanes. On closer inspection, the Airbuses had Virgin America’s livery. I was tempted to snap a picture, but resisted out of fear of being tackled by an air marshal.

Last month, Virgin America got the U.S. Department of Transportation’s approval to start a U.S. airline, after agreeing to concessions relating to its ownership structure.

The airline will be based in San Francisco with initial flights to JFK. Dulles is among the initial airports targeted for expansion.

Virgin Atlantic is one of my favorite airlines. Although U.S. law severely restricts the amount of influence Richard Branson can have on the company (one of DOT’s requirements was that Virgin America replace its CEO because of his ties to Branson), I hope that they can bring some of that high level of service to American aviation.

The planes seem well outfitted for people flying out of the San Francisco area. Among the features touted on Virgin’s Web site: 9″ screens, power ports, RJ-45 and USB jacks and touch-screen food ordering. And that’s in coach. Planes will have Internet access. The Web 2.0 set can use the plane’s seat-to-seat social network to interact with other passengers.

Virgin America even offers a blogger-friendly video of its Linux-based in-flight entertainment features. The video includes some technical details. Virgin says they will also be inviting Linux developers to create custom applications for the IFE.

(If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to the post to see the video.)

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