The new BA website "beta" version

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 20 total)

  • onajetplane
    Participant

    Reluctant to spur yet more BA bashing… but the new website is in my opinion genuinely terrible. How could they have designed something that steps back rather than forward with regards speed/convenience/minimal number of clicks to complete a booking. At the start of the booking process having to keep clicking just to bring a dropdown menu for selection is so infuriating. I had inadvertently set it to a “oneway” search and it took a stupid number of clicks to drop down/change it to return. Nevermind when I got signed in to my Executive Club, I was told that “Avios bookings are not currently available online.” And then there was a warning message in my upcoming flights section about domestic flights showing as cancelled that weren’t actually cancelled. You couldn’t make it up. Definitely not a fan…


    Flightlevel
    Participant

    I think they release the alpha test to the customers before they test it in house and call it a beta test?


    FDOS_UK
    Participant

    [quote quote=794506]Reluctant to spur yet more BA bashing… but the new website is in my opinion genuinely terrible. How could they have designed something that steps back rather than forward with regards speed/convenience/minimal number of clicks to complete a booking. At the start of the booking process having to keep clicking just to bring a dropdown menu for selection is so infuriating. I had inadvertently set it to a “oneway” search and it took a stupid number of clicks to drop down/change it to return. Nevermind when I got signed in to my Executive Club, I was told that “Avios bookings are not currently available online.” And then there was a warning message in my upcoming flights section about domestic flights showing as cancelled that weren’t actually cancelled. You couldn’t make it up. Definitely not a fan…

    [/quote]

    Why bash BA IT – they are experts in self bludgeoning.

    Last week, my paper boarding pass was quite different to the one in the app – one showed luggage, the other was HBO, one was a cheap flight, the other Business UK etc. I showed it to the manager at the gate in Heathrow and he was genuinely perplexed and could not think of any sane/logical explanation.


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    Just had a look and it does seem much slower than the old site, even though it was accessed via the old site.


    SGJNI1961
    Participant

    They really have managed to make it worse. Unbelievable!


    onajetplane
    Participant

    Yes. And Avios bookings are still showing as unavailable when I sign in days later…


    Charles-P
    Participant

    Speaking as somebody who must now do his own flight bookings (before retirement I had an assistant) I find the BA website intuitive, fast and stable. Something that can not be said for example with the appalling Lufthansa website and its irritating popups “you have made an error” or the Air France site which I am sure manages the HTML equivalent of a Gallic shrug when it crashes once again.


    Tom Otley
    Keymaster

    Hello Charles-P.

    Funnily enough, I had some problems with the Air France site this week. There are some very good fares on there at the moment though….


    Charles-P
    Participant

    Tom,

    I agree, they can be surprisingly competitive with some excellent fares to the US from time to time but I find the website very frustrating to use with many examples of it “hanging” and one experience of mine where I was charged four times for the same ticket after the site went into some soft of Parisian sulk and kept on selling me the same ticket for a few minutes until I shut my laptop !


    FDOS_UK
    Participant

    BA website = poor performance (though I am glad it works well for Charles P).

    Just to give a couple current examples

    1 – Technical Error

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/igjpgxdgkj2d1hg/BA%20website%201.jpg?dl=0

    This has been on my account page for a while now – it is not a critical error, but it looks awful

    2 – The Case of the Phantom Upgrade

    POUG offered

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/3kwx4z4riazwnch/BA%20website%202.jpg?dl=0

    Might be worth investigating, let’s look further

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/3kwx4z4riazwnch/BA%20website%202.jpg?dl=0

    Okay, I don’t want to upgrade the London to Dublin leg, as I have an exit seat in ET, but why not look at CW from Dubai to London?

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ke3dijxy74bi1rg/BA%20website%203.jpg?dl=0

    Oh dear, it cannot be done online – because I only wanted to upgrade one sector – I can upgrade both legs

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/3irvkyzqz2sjm07/BA%20website%204.jpg?dl=0

    I could upgrade both legs (for 3,250€), but not one – why offer the choice if it is not technically possible?

    Having shown these examples, the legacy websites are not great (and there are good reasons for this). The best airline website I use is easyJet.com, which is excellent.


    Charles-P
    Participant

    These BA issues do seem to happen to you FDOS don’t they ?


    FDOS_UK
    Participant

    Charles

    I have posted the evidence. Maybe they don’t happen to you (I have no reason to doubt what you say and the BA website has inconsistent performance).


    Charles-P
    Participant

    FDOS – poor you. All these repeated troubles with BA, perhaps they are out to get you ? 🙂


    FDOS_UK
    Participant

    Maybe BA systems are just legacy systems with complex interfaces, prone to random break down?

    They’re not organised enough to set out to get me 🙂


    Charles-P
    Participant

    Maybe BA systems are just legacy systems

    My understanding is that the reliability and quality of the BA IT system is the result of a recent upgrade to a new Customer Data Warehouse based on Oracle and code named “Oceanwave”

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