British Airways

Review by Adrian Mann, owner of Adrian Mann Design, providing independent reviews and analysis of travel web sites in the UK.

For this first review of 2002, we take a look at the British Airways site.

Overall
The UK homepage looks a little bare and uninspiring, with a limited range of colours, few images, but at least it has a flight search, and there are plenty of links to the rest of the site. To get the best from the site, you’ll need to register – this is a quick and easy process, and allows you to use Online Check-in, view previous bookings and so on. As well as the flight search, there are links to all the subjects you’d expect, such as timetables and routes, arrivals and departures information, flight operations news, special offers, and lots of destination and travel information.

Content
The main function of the site is to search for and book flights. The flight search has been made as simple as possible, and requires the bare minimum of information to conduct a search. When suitable flights are found, the user is taken to the booking pages, which look quite different to the rest of the site. The layout is clear and logical, and it’s easy to select the most appropriate flight. Once this is done, the flight is then booked, paid for and confirmed. A progress indicator shows where you are in the process, and it’s easy to go back and make changes if necessary. Online bookings, which use the E-ticket electronic ticket system, qualify for a £5 discount per flight. To check in at the airport, all you’ll need is the credit card you used to pay for the flight.

Arrivals and Departures information can be searched for by flight number, route or airport.

The online press office has copious amounts of information on all aspects of British Airways operations, from details of Concorde’s upgrades, a history of BA, to flying with children and information on DVT. There’s also a search facility in case you can’t find exactly what you’re after straight away. The updates to the information aren’t terribly quick though – even after Birmingham Airport had been re-opened following the recent crash, it took several hours before this appeared on the site.

The destination information comes in the form of City Miniguides, covering 99 destinations. Select your destination, and then choose the subjects you’re interested in, which cover different methods of arrival and departure, getting around, etiquette, sightseeing and others. This is then presented on a single page, which is easy to print. Other information covers subjects such as Health and Well Being, Special Assistance, Travel Classes, Inflight information, seating plans and more.

Travel Money offers the usual currency converter, and several other useful services, such as online currency ordering and a rate tracker.

Getting around the site is quite easy, although there are some very tiny links and buttons that are quite difficult to hit! For example, the button for logging in after entering your username and password is a mere 12 x 9 pixels.

Summary
In the main, it’s an excellent site, with good functionality and excellent information. There’s the usual crop of broken links, i.e. the link to the image library didn’t work, and the UK weather was unavailable.

For the flagship site of the UK’s premier airline, there’s a distinct lack of an overall design, and it gives the impression that some of the older areas of the site have been tacked on without regard to the design of the rest of the site.