US Airways this week quietly raised the bar for airline sites when it began offering online redemption of frequent flier awards. The Arlington, VA, carrier upgraded its dial-up Priority TravelWorks service, which it developed with Galileo in 1995, to let its premier frequent travelers cash in rewards without the help of an agent.
By year’s end, the airline will add a booking capability to its Web site, some of the same service it has offered on the proprietary Priority TravelWorks product for the past two years. It also will overhaul its Web site to allow all US Airways frequent fliers to redeem their miles on the Internet-another first.
Maybe US Airways doesn’t have a content-heavy travel site or a channel on a browser to show for its electronic marketing efforts, but that’s not the point, according to airline spokesman David Castelveter. “We’re giving the customers what they want,” he says.
The implications from this diminutive cyberspace pioneer seem clear: bells and whistles don’t always make users happy. And jumping headfirst into cyberspace doesn’t always make sense, either.
It remains to be seen if the new Priority TravelWorks is what customers need. In the meantime, there’s something to be learned from US Airways’ meat-and-potatoes approach to the Internet.
“When we went online in 1995, our customers told us that they wanted greater control over their travel destinies,” Castelveter says. “And that’s what we wanted to give them.”
Like every other airline, the carrier formerly known as USAir was trying to trim its distribution costs back then, and it found a way to give passengers what they wanted while saving money itself. Priority TravelWorks, which US Airways says is the first-ever online booking product, enabled frequent fliers to buy electronic tickets.
Castelveter won’t quantify the savings to US Airways. Indeed, with only a fraction of the carrier’s 19 million frequent fliers on the proprietary booking system, the figure is probably negligible.
But that may be about to change. As the US Airways Web site is upgraded by the end of 1997, a whole new subset of consumers will have access to booking and rewards redemption features. These users could make a big difference to the airline’s bottom line.
Rushing online isn’t always the answer to a marketing challenge, as US Airways learned. Castelveter’s carrier was a cautious innovator, sending Priority TravelWorks disks to only its elite frequent travelers rather than to every passenger with a personal computer. Not only would an America Online mass marketing approach have cost the airline more in the short term, it would have slowed the evolution of a more efficient, general-purpose Web site. Just imagine the help desk fielding calls from millions of passengers a week.
“We’re not in the technology business,” notes Castelveter. “We’re in the customer service business.”
Sounds like a sane philosophy for an otherwise insane business. But will travelers choose to use US Airways because of these innovations? “We hope so,” says Castelveter.
Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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