Things in the Sky

A few weeks ago, I was offered to try a product from OAG called Flights2Go, designed for mobile phones. The product enables the user to search OAG’s massive database of flight schedules, check flight status, and look up airline contact information. OAG seems to be marketing this product as a method to cope with delays and cancellations by making it easier to find replacement flights.

To be completely honest, I don’t have a data plan for my phone, and I never use mobile web. As a result, I did all my testing on my laptop. I’d like to thank my good friend and total Mac geek Matt Patenaude for taking screenshots of this product for me on his iPhone. I was going to put in all of the screenshots in this post, but they took up lots of space, so you can see them all here (thanks for setting that up, Matt).

First is the home page, which is just a simple menu. One comment Matt had was that the links were too close together, and he would have to zoom in to make sure he was clicking the right link, wasting time. Spacing the options out is an easy fix, though Matt suggested large buttons could be helpful.

The first page is used to find flight schedules. It’s pretty simple. Enter the departing and arriving city, the date and time, and an airline code (if the user wants to), and a few itineraries are presented. The user can then find out more information about the itinerary or check the status of the flights. This feature works very well. The only thing that confuses me about finding flights is the airline codes form. Every other page has a link to look up an airline code, but this one doesn’t. I think that adding one is a relatively easy change that can improve the page.

I did notice one minor fluke on this page with aircraft codes, and I think the list might have to be updated a bit. I noticed this problem with United flights operated with Ted aircraft. United uses a special code for these A320s (32S). OAG doesn’t seem to understand that code, and just lists Airbus 318/319/320/321, though this is very minor, I think.

The flight status pages are pretty standard. The first page is basic: just enter the flight number. The second page required the origin and destination, which is good if the user is looking for the status of a mutli-leg flight.

I did notice one odd issue with the flight status feature though. I found it on AirTran, Frontier, JetBlue, and Southwest flights (though there certainly could be other airlines that are affected by this problem). For every  flight I checked the scheduled and actual arrival and departure times matched, and the status was always “no status derivable.” I found this a bit weird, to say the least.

The airline info page is relatively basic, but useful. The user enters the airline code (or looks up the airline name), and the airline’s contact information is listed. What confused me is why only numbers for North American countries were provided. I would expect that an American traveling in London might use use British Airways’ local number instead of its US booking number. Why isn’t the airline’s website listed? If Flights2Go is meant for mobile phones with web access, I don’t think it is much of a leap to think that a user might want to visit the airline’s website for information.

Well, that got me digging and brought up another issue - many airlines are missing from the list. For example, the timetable search will bring up Ryanair flights, but won’t provide any contact information for the airline, which doesn’t help much with booking. Generally, it seems that if the airline doesn’t serve North America, its contact information isn’t included (I think). I found this confusing since OAG seem to market this for customers accross the globe, not just in the US. OAG should either fix this or inform its users about it.

On a related note, some airlines shouldn’t be included at all. For example, Pan Am Clipper Connection doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for awhile. As such, it should be removed.

Next is the price of the service - $4.99 per month or $49.99 for the year. The product page, however, notes that the monthly fee is “payable by credit card only for a minimum period of twelve months.” What’s the point of even offering a monthly membership?

OK, so is OAG Flights2Go worth it? The flight schedules page works quite nicely, and just needs a link to a list of airline codes to really work well. The flight status pages are essentially useless for some airlines, and to make matters worse there are free services that do the task. Finally, the section with contact information for airlines needs help. I was going to recommend the product as a good idea to purchase on a monthly basis. For example, as a resident of the northeast, I would probably pay the monthly fee from November to March. But the pricing page makes it seem like a monthly membership is useless.

In conclusion, I think OAG needs to fix a few things before it’s worth purchasing Flights2Go.

Once again, you can see all of the screenshots here.