Hey guys,
So for those of you who have checked-in online recently you may have seen the new boarding pass experience featuring relevant content and offers based on your destination of travel.
You’ll see the weather forecast, local events, restaurants, and other relevant offers.
I worked on this little project with Team Delta earlier this year, and would love to do a little pulse check for your thoughts and feedback.
Talk to me! 
Jacob
September 17th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I hate it. It eats expensive color ink from my printer when I’m at home and some hotel printers take forever to spit the page out when I’m on the road. I print at least 4 boarding passes a week from Delta and I’ve learned to check the box to turn it off.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort and I get that Delta is trying to find additional revenue streams where ever they can but we’re so bombarded with ads that I stopped bothering to look at them a long time ago.
Mark
September 17th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Sorry to be so critical, but I think the weather is the only useful thing on it.
All the advertising seems to me rather obnoxious. But I guess if it actually makes a difference in fares, I can understand. I’d prefer it be limited to advertising that would be useful to me while in the airport. For example, coupons, etc — I’m assuming your goal is to get more people to check in online, so why not provide that encouragement by offering something of value.
Even more information, like average cab fares, location of ATMs, and an airport map would be useful…
September 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Could be useful for some, but as a frequent traveller on the same itinerary each week, I am thankful for your “Do not print the commercials” check box. It saves ink (think green!). Of course it would be even better if the remaining parts of the two passes that I normally have, could be printed on one page (even more eco friendly!).
September 17th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Mark – I’m guessing if you travel 4 times a week you are one of our frequent business travelers. What type of content could we put in this section that would be meaningful or relevant to you while you’re on the road?
Ben – Your suggestions are great, and indicate that you’re looking for more utility out of the pass. We’re listening, and stay tuned, because I think we might have some news to share on some of this shortly!
DisneyDude – I go green too, living in Atlanta without a car (talk about ofsetting economic foot print!). Now, are you using recycled paper to print those passes?
However, I’m going to pose the same question to you that I just asked Mark. As a business traveler, what information could be put in this space that would be very valuable for you as frequent traveler?
Thanks for the feedback guys. Really appreciate. Keep the comments coming and I’ll respond accordingly.
Jacob
September 17th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
As a frequent biz travler I would say include the equipment type (ex. 757 ETOPS or 764) with listing of amenities (AVOD) it offers, etc. Maybe hit up Zagat and offer highly rated Zagat restaurants in the final destination. If it costs money, offer the service to medallions for free.
The weather is fine although most of us check online religiously everyday.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
If there must be something there…. weather is a possibility (saves me going to weather.com before packing). Another useful one might be traffic issues – road works, events, etc., so I can avoid the jams. Have you thought about alternative flight schedules, in case meetings finish early or late and the pax wants to use same day standby?
The events listing currently printed is not much use as most of them are during working hours, and I have other ways of finding restaurants in a new area, rather than off my boarding pass.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
This needs to be changed, you guys are going to waste too much color ink and this is a perfect example why I check at the Kiosk because I often forget to check the box.
I know delta loves it’s blue but those blue bars need to be black and thinner, a simple tag would do.
in fact everything should be in black and white.
The ads are too much we are checking in not looking for a deal, I printed out that very stub hub ad as it appears on sites I frequent and it literally puts so much ink on the paper that if I poke it right after printing my finger goes through the paper because of how wet it is.
Plus what is the point of making me print an ad that must be clicked? Is my paper magically going to take me to Stubhub to buy baseball tickets when I tap on the ad?
If I were an advertiser I would be upset that my ads that I want clicked on are placed on this page, I would immediately stop advertising with SOJERN.
I say get rid of the ads, as a frequent flier I would like to see what my entire itinerary connected to that ticket is, when my return flight is how many Skymiles I have, an offer to stay in the crown club room.
Maybe Delta would like to Sync with my Calendar and display my schedule instead of the croc ad.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Hi Jacob,
My last flights I turned them off. I could care less about the weather, as by the time I print my BP I’ve already packed.
As a non-road warrior (but still 50-75k mile FF), I like the coupon idea, and would also recommend airport guides for the specific cities I’m flying through. Perhaps a tough sudoku puzzle that’s different for each BP would be nice, too.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I like that idea, a Sudoku puzzle or something.
If you how many skymiles I have, since you now have the marketplace, maybe give me a list of things that I can purchase with my miles.
Inform me what movie is playing in flight, whats on the EATS menu.
September 18th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I’m in the very frequent flyer category, dare I say too frequent a flyer. I hate the advertising! For a business traveller, it’s a waste of paper, ink and totally wasted information on me. As a business traveller, i would prefer the option to opt out and have just the boarding pass printed. However, if you included the full travel itinerary, equipment, weather, entertainment options (AVOD), frequent flyer miles, etc. that would be more useful to me.
I understand the need to generate revenue, but make the information useful and target market to the consumer’s profile. If I were on leisure travel, then that info might be relevant to me. However, 99% of the time, I’m on a business trip and have a different focus on my mind. Use your database of traveler data to give you insight into travel patterns of your flyers and have the right information displayed based that profile.
And if you had the travel itinerary sync with my Outlook calendar, that would be awesome! Take a look at the new iphone app called Flight Exec. Might be interesting to do a joint program with them for your road warriors with iphones.
Gene
September 18th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
HWgeek,
you do know that DL has an ICS download for calendar syncs. Works quite well, if your calendar software can handle ics files; except for one thing. On an itinerary with connecting flights, the calendar entry shows up as a single entry start to finish. Even worse is that the text in the entry shows the correct departure for the first flight, but shows the arrival time of the second flight. The departure and arrival times for the second flight are as they should be.
I prefer the NW system, which downloads the segments as individual entries.
September 18th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I can understand Delta wanting this revenue but full color ads are annoying. An ad printed out wastes expensive color ink, so we can have something we didn’t want in the first place. This is insulting.
I can see the “highlights schedule” being reasonably useful for an ad, but lose the color scheme – make the it black and white only. If you must have pictures as ads, make them light gray or dithered black and white. (Remember, people often print these out on terrible hotel printers.) Consider selling the entire space to one advertiser; I’m more likely to pay attention to it that way. Are you targeting ads based on the pax’s cabin? F/J flyers (especially those who actually booked those cabins) probably have more disposable income.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:53 am
@disney, I know I can download the meetingrequest file, but I mean it would be nice if let’s say I have a bunch of meetings if I could upload an ICS file to delta and have it appear on my ticket so I can check the schedule on my boarding pass.
September 21st, 2008 at 8:41 am
I find it annoying and a waste of ink. I usually print these without much effort, now I have to remember to say I don’t want this. Means I do it twice….once after I get what I didn’t want.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
One of the first things I do getting off a plane, is look for one of the direction boards to find the crown room club. If the flyer is a Crown Room member, put the location of the nearest Crown Room to the scheduled arrival gate. Also it would be nice if traveling through an airport that does not have a Crown Room, but one of Northwest or Continental’s lounges, that it be placed on the page also.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I think they are great, I noticed it with my web check in last week, printing it black and white versus color was easy. Having the weather and things going on was nice to have, didn’t have to check online to wonder what the climate would be in Atlanta.
Maybe default without them, and allow users to select with it, as I would.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
How about printing confirmation that you have been listed for upgrade? On a recent flight, although my reservation said requested, at the gate I noticed that my name did not appear on the list. As they were already boarding I did not have time to correct this, but had I known I could have asked the Crown Room agent to help me.
November 7th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Jacob,
Sorry that I just tripped across this blog; thanks for asking for ideas from us frequent travellers on what we’d like to see:
- Ability to set in our profile whether to turn this off (so we don’t have to remember each time)
- The idea about other flight options for the routing that day is useful, in case one has the option to fly home early, etc.
- Crown Room info, no offense to the poster with the idea on this one, but am willing to bet most FT’s know where they are by heart in ATL, CVG, SLC, etc. That said, if a CR is closed/under rennovation, etc. that would be valuable.
- I like the suggestion about in-flight services… will the equipment have in flight power, is it just meals to eat (and what’s on the menu that month), IFE options, etc. so I don’t have to grab a DVD if the movie or IFE on board is ok. Stuff like that is useful.
-Although it might be considered counter advertising, how about noting the on-time performance of a particular route?
- Also, key facts about destinations (does the place I’m going to have a state law prohibiting cell phone use while driving, etc.?) about things that vary state to state.
- Although a bit of a programming chore, allowing us what sections to print/not print would be nice. i.e. print facts/weather, don’t print coupons, etc.
Thanks for reading, pmcary