I began with a web site…

Traveling, especially internationally, is emblematic of how the user experience does not stop at the web site. Today, I was thrilled after easily finding the web check-in on the Air Canada site and successfully getting a window seat with a significant distance from the odor of the washrooms. My boarding pass pre-printed, I felt completely reassured that my time going through the mass of airport lines would be short and reasonably painless. Yay for their web team.

Suddenly, I was annoyed.

When I got to the airport international terminal, I immediately felt tricked, as they wanted Heathrow passengers to check in at the domestic terminal (an annoying walk away). Why didn’t I get a web notification of this when I checked in, I thought? Isn’t there some computer in their network that knows which kiosks are accepting what travelers? Just a minor glitch, keep moving, walk to the domestic terminal… keep smiling.

In the domestic terminal, things were looking up again. The lovely and cheerful web baggage drop off woman sorted me out with the appropriate luggage stickers and pointed me towards the belt.

Then it got worse.

The line for the belt was long, very long. The woman running the conveyor belt looked a little panicked and started opening panels and pressing buttons. The machine was making beeping noises like a toy ray gun and the woman began pushing the same button over and over. At this point my fellow travelers started shuffling and grumbling and I wished I had my little camera on me to take a photo. “How luggage gets lost” and “the ease of web check-in” would have been the captions. It was so classic, I had to try and keep myself from laughing. The ray gun sound was grating on some of the line captives and the poor belt operator started radioing for help to no avail. She must have asked for help five times, with four of the staff at the special luggage belt, 10 feet away, staring at her blankly for 10 minutes before one of them decided to walk over to her. This started a movement of sorts and they all slowly moved towards the belt. None of them could figure out the issue. After much staring at what must have been the ‘fix it’ button, one of the staff remembered they had another belt. They decided, as the line up had now expanded back to the other belt, to turn us around and made the people who were first in line, now last.

The woman in front of me, now behind, almost had a full-on moment. I smiled at her and said, “It could be worse, we could be the people with our luggage stuck in the conveyor maze.” She agreed and was instantly smug. So long as someone is having a worse time than you, everything is fine. I love humans, so easily appeased.

I eventually reached the front of the line and placed my bag delicately on it, with visions of broken gears and untrained service staff dancing in my head. Never put anything you can’t live without in checked baggage for this exact reason. Personal risk and sanity management at it’s best.

Security was actually efficient!

The long walk back to the international terminal was a relief as I was now expecting security to be an insane hassle. While I did beep, as per usual, the lady who “wanded” me was very friendly and rather funny. The annoyance of prodding and swabbing of gear was easily thwarted by a smile and a couple of jokes.

My airplane was a little sketchy.

My user experience with Air Canada did not improve. The Boeing 767 was from the 70’s and was fraught with issues. While I can appreciate that a plane that has lasted that long likely has good engineering, the floor never having been vacuumed, my arm rest broadcasting music without headset attachments and the flickering television monitors all contributed to my feeling that we might fall out of the sky at any given time. The airline attendants were nice enough, although a little worn and overworked, which made me feel bad about asking them to do anything.

Overall, I started out very happy with Air Canada and was pleased with my online experience. The in-person encounter was less than pleasant however, and I will attempt to chose other airlines if the options are available.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Web to Real Life. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.