SAS app:en - Hur kan den bli ännu bättre?

[H4ipM8adRg9nvkRu]

If there was a “never ask me again about insurance, on any future flights”-checkbox the first time I would not be to annoyed by the offer.

Similar to most here I would prefer not having to go through this step, but I think something like this could be a okay middle way if you decide to do it anyway.

 

[massimo]

Good Friday everyone!

I have another question for you guys connected to Low Price Calendar, I know it's not a typical business use case, but after all, we all travel for leisure as well and are more sensitive to prices and flexible with dates.

Today our LPC shows one calendar for outbound and one calendar for inbound, in some cases due to fare rules on Long Haul flights the prices for inbound depend on the price you have selected for inbound, which makes it tricky to display in a good way. Also, the user is required to scan both out and in calendars to find the best price solution which is ok as it makes it flexible, you can leave on Thu and back on Sun but you could leave on Fri and back on Mon. But you need to do the math.

There is another way to do this by adding a new element to the UI which asks you the length of stay, so then we print in each cell the total round trip value which means only one calendar. More clean and straightforward. If you want only OW you select 0 days, if you are planning to stay 7 days you select that from the dropdown and the grid refreshes. When I travel I kind of know how long I am going to stay, it's either 3-4, 7 or whatever days, so by just switching the length of stay I see the total in each cell.

Maybe it shall be a setting that the user could decide to activate and support both scenarios.

Agree | Desagree or comments?

Yeah! And if you wonder we are doing the LPC in the app now...

 

[intuition]

...
Speaking of access quickly boarding passes, we had this idea that we never implemented, but we could, a floating button on the home screen with access to the active boarding pass only visible if you have any.
...

This is interesting.

I don't know where mobile OS tech is today, but this used to be a function of built in wallets. Ie I would store the Boarding pass in a "wallet" and it would automatically pop it on scrreen based on date&time and position.
The pro of "wallet" is that it stores any brand of boarding pass (as long as the airline plays nicely) and you need lees code in the app and less to maintain. The con is that you need a third party app, and development of that can move in unwanted directions.

If you can make this a good implemenation (ie the right BP shown at the "right" time), then sure I'd love this shortcut. (Consider also allowing export of BP to wallets if this is feasible)

One thing to consider is when there are multiple people in the booking. Typical case main traveller + child. So quick access to all passes is needed.

Question:
We are planning to add an inbox from the profile screen that logs all the push notifications we are sending to you so you can go back after they disappear.
Sketch (ignore icons and content).

We might also add sms and email in the future.

Interested?
Comments?

Yes please!
Not sure it is just me, but the notification paradigm has gone overboard. When every app is screaming for attention, no one gets it...
I'd like an inbox. Clicking a notification probably should take you to that inbox.

Maybe you also should be able to set some preferences from such an inbox. If you feel one message is not needed to be pushed, it would be really nice to be linked to the preference of that type of message so you can unselect it (and for your future ideas select if Text, Mail or push is the preferred channel)

Close question:

Would you guys buy insurance from us for travel and medical or you are covered by your company, private insurance, or credit cards?

If the booking flow will force you through a step to ask whether you would like the insurance or not, will you be annoyed?

I'm (like most) coverered by home insurance for basic travel protection. When travel for work, employeer is covering. And on top of that, insurance is included in creditcard.
Maybe there is a market for this, but it would certainly annoy me and create a threshold in the buying flow. My only reason for buying in any app is when it offers fewer steps than doing it on desktop browser. Desktop has so much better overview of things, so a purchase flow in an app must offer a very streamlined flow to satisfy me.

(I still remember with joy the WAP (!) application by Malmö Aviation from early 2000's. It was literally 5 clicks and zero keyboard input from start to ticket in your pocket. I would buy the ticket while running through the departures hall and it was done before I hit security. That's the golden standard!)

 

[intuition]

Good Friday everyone!

I have another question for you guys connected to Low Price Calendar, I know it's not a typical business use case, but after all, we all travel for leisure as well and are more sensitive to prices and flexible with dates.

Today our LPC shows one calendar for outbound and one calendar for inbound, in some cases due to fare rules on Long Haul flights the prices for inbound depend on the price you have selected for inbound, which makes it tricky to display in a good way. Also, the user is required to scan both out and in calendars to find the best price solution which is ok as it makes it flexible, you can leave on Thu and back on Sun but you could leave on Fri and back on Mon. But you need to do the math.

There is another way to do this by adding a new element to the UI which asks you the length of stay, so then we print in each cell the total round trip value which means only one calendar. More clean and straightforward. If you want only OW you select 0 days, if you are planning to stay 7 days you select that from the dropdown and the grid refreshes. When I travel I kind of know how long I am going to stay, it's either 3-4, 7 or whatever days, so by just switching the length of stay I see the total in each cell.

Maybe it shall be a setting that the user could decide to activate and support both scenarios.

Agree | Desagree or comments?

Yeah! And if you wonder we are doing the LPC in the app now...

First of all - thanks for recognizing this issue!!
(I am currently moving away from my airline of choice since 10+ years. They've failed to understand this problem and always offers prices in a calendar that in the end can't be booked. Unless you select the return on a red-eye flying a thursday with a full moon and only if the connection is over 11 hours...)

Length of stay
This certainly fits some use cases.
The duration should be easily modifed, to fit scenario "OK, but what if I stay 1 more day?". Then calendar should quickly re-populate and not require a new search.

One thing to consider is that "0 days" could mean I want to return the same day, ie not only one ways. This is likely an edge-case, but for city pairs with multiple flights this could be interesting. But maybe not a must-have in a LPC.


Populate on click
You could show the current calendar as is, and when user clicks desired outbound day, the inbound calendar re-populates with prices of those specific combination.
You could also allow user to click homebound date first, and re-populate the ountbound caldendar instead.

User still needs to do the math to see the total price, but user can easily see the cheapest combination, and also easily see how much more expensive alternatives are.

I think this method fits quite some cases. Often departure or return date is more fixed than the other. "I want to leave on thursday or friday, let's see what nice prices are avilable" or "Let's go to XXX, but we need to be back by sunday!"

 

[massimo]

First of all - thanks for recognizing this issue!!
(I am currently moving away from my airline of choice since 10+ years. They've failed to understand this problem and always offers prices in a calendar that in the end can't be booked. Unless you select the return on a red-eye flying a thursday with a full moon and only if the connection is over 11 hours...)

Length of stay
This certainly fits some use cases.
The duration should be easily modifed, to fit scenario "OK, but what if I stay 1 more day?". Then calendar should quickly re-populate and not require a new search.

One thing to consider is that "0 days" could mean I want to return the same day, ie not only one ways. This is likely an edge-case, but for city pairs with multiple flights this could be interesting. But maybe not a must-have in a LPC.


Populate on click
You could show the current calendar as is, and when user clicks desired outbound day, the inbound calendar re-populates with prices of those specific combination.
You could also allow user to click homebound date first, and re-populate the ountbound caldendar instead.

User still needs to do the math to see the total price, but user can easily see the cheapest combination, and also easily see how much more expensive alternatives are.

I think this method fits quite some cases. Often departure or return date is more fixed than the other. "I want to leave on thursday or friday, let's see what nice prices are avilable" or "Let's go to XXX, but we need to be back by sunday!"

Yes here below is the direction we are sketching which is what you mentioned in the "Populate on click" which does the job. Maybe we should have a calendar settings that let you show one calendar proving you know your lenght of stay and sure, it shall be just a dropdown in the calendar itself to refresh the grid, not a new search. But this one here below seems to work well.

...Sketches...

 

[Sullon]

Regarding insurance, maybe it is unique to Sweden but health care costs abroad are always covered by your home insurance. And most people have one. Insurance against illness and flight cancellation is an add on to the home insurance and it is also covered by most credit cards. The market is probably very small in Sweden for these extra insurances while irritation about having to deselect them is considerable (at least for me).

LPC booking. Check out how Finnair has solved their booking. You select a date and you get the total price calculated and displayed on each of the following return dates in the calendar. But thinking about it, it is a good system not just concerning LPC.

 

[palmen]

Yes here below is the direction we are sketching which is what you mentioned in the "Populate on click" which does the job. Maybe we should have a calendar settings that let you show one calendar proving you know your lenght of stay and sure, it shall be just a dropdown in the calendar itself to refresh the grid, not a new search. But this one here below seems to work well.

...Sketches...

Visa bifogad bild 139970

Looks good to me.

 

[intuition]

...
LPC booking. Check out how Finnair has solved their booking. You select a date and you get the total price calculated and displayed on each of the following return dates in the calendar. But thinking about it, it is a good system not just concerning LPC.

Maybe we are talking about different calendars, but in my experience Finnair suffers from this issue and have the worst possible solution. They display the lowest possible price in the LPC, but they do not take into account fare rules, so when you click through on a set of dates that looks cheap, that price is not bookable.

Also, clicking through from the calendar sends you to a page where only outbound is selected. Once that is selected, you move on to a page where homebound is selected. Only then do you see the actual return price and then you realise the price is not available on any return flight. Then you need to go back to step one to select another outbound option, to get the homebound recalculated. Rinse repeat for maybe 8 time 8 combinations, only to find the price shown in LPC is not bookable at all.

The finnair solutions is most certainly not the way to go, as long as there are fare rules controlling what outbound / inbound pair can be combined and at what prices.

Yes here below is the direction we are sketching which is what you mentioned in the "Populate on click" which does the job. Maybe we should have a calendar settings that let you show one calendar proving you know your lenght of stay and sure, it shall be just a dropdown in the calendar itself to refresh the grid, not a new search. But this one here below seems to work well.

...Sketches...

Visa bifogad bild 139970

On mobile there is the space issue, so I do see the advantages of "length of stay" calendar with only one calendar and return prices.
I like the two-calendar view too (and I guess this is what most SK users are used to) but on mobile there will be a scrolling issue.

So I like both for those reasons

 

[Sullon]

Maybe we are talking about different calendars, but in my experience Finnair suffers from this issue and have the worst possible solution. They display the lowest possible price in the LPC, but they do not take into account fare rules, so when you click through on a set of dates that looks cheap, that price is not bookable.

Also, clicking through from the calendar sends you to a page where only outbound is selected. Once that is selected, you move on to a page where homebound is selected. Only then do you see the actual return price and then you realise the price is not available on any return flight. Then you need to go back to step one to select another outbound option, to get the homebound recalculated. Rinse repeat for maybe 8 time 8 combinations, only to find the price shown in LPC is not bookable at all.

The finnair solutions is most certainly not the way to go, as long as there are fare rules controlling what outbound / inbound pair can be combined and at what prices.



On mobile there is the space issue, so I do see the advantages of "length of stay" calendar with only one calendar and return prices.
I like the two-calendar view too (and I guess this is what most SK users are used to) but on mobile there will be a scrolling issue.

So I like both for those reasons

Maybe we are talking about different things. I am just using the ordinary booking function. Selection your destinations, you see the whole months prices, click on a date and you see what the total price is if you combined it with any other date during that month or later. And thats the price you get (except that Finnair is using their uberstripped Light class as the lowest price which is in my opinion worthless).

 

[massimo]

Maybe we are talking about different calendars, but in my experience Finnair suffers from this issue and have the worst possible solution. They display the lowest possible price in the LPC, but they do not take into account fare rules, so when you click through on a set of dates that looks cheap, that price is not bookable.

Also, clicking through from the calendar sends you to a page where only outbound is selected. Once that is selected, you move on to a page where homebound is selected. Only then do you see the actual return price and then you realise the price is not available on any return flight. Then you need to go back to step one to select another outbound option, to get the homebound recalculated. Rinse repeat for maybe 8 time 8 combinations, only to find the price shown in LPC is not bookable at all.

The finnair solutions is most certainly not the way to go, as long as there are fare rules controlling what outbound / inbound pair can be combined and at what prices.



On mobile there is the space issue, so I do see the advantages of "length of stay" calendar with only one calendar and return prices.
I like the two-calendar view too (and I guess this is what most SK users are used to) but on mobile there will be a scrolling issue.

So I like both for those reasons

yes, I agree, Finnair Ui display 2 calendars months one bound at a time, but you cannot see the price for the return until you select the outbound and likely your decision is made by both outbound and inbound, so you end up clicking back and forth and not remembering which date the price was, google flights and all those using one calendar only have the same problem, so this is not an option as I see it, we should stick to 2 calendars one for each bound and eventually try to see if we could the user define the length of stay and be clear on what we are displaying.
We could still place the calendar as a column in landscape mode so it is easier to compare without scrolling, for those users who will find this out by tilting the device, will find it handy...

A note about the LPC data in general, prices are based on cache and computed data, any traditional network carrier uses all booking classes in the alphabet to optimize their availability, each booking class has one or more fares defined by a Fare Basis, and each passenger type (ADT, CHD, INF, YTH) has his own discount. You need to add all possible OnD and route combinations and to that all possible flights, then you need to check availability apply the rules for connecting time and validate which fares are combinable with each other, check the rules of partners, minimum stay, advance purchase, ... then you need to multiply by all passenger types, for all days for all the year ahead, and is not over as we have then close fare for corporate. This is likely making an inventory of fares in the number of hundreds of thousands if not millions, so getting the cache for that lowest price for a day is a bit complicated, this is why all of us traditional carriers can show only one month at the time while LCC has an easier product, only point to point and different price strategy so they have a better capability to make complex filters and massive queries. Traditional airlines like us use systems designed before the invention of the internet, a lot of features you use every day in the app are delivered by messages originated by telex.