the best airline websites

[milehighj]

What do you think are the best airline websites, taking into account visual appeal and functionality?

My choices:

SQ: visuals = 7/10, functionality = 9/10, total = 16/20

BMI: visuals = 8/10, functionality = 6.5/10, total = 14.5/20

[lee_apromise]

Don't want to rate it but in order of my preference:
1. SQ
2. QF
3. OZ
4. BA

[flo]

sq booking does not work out properly with safari. so i'd say:

Singapore Airlines
design: 4/10
usability: 7/10

functionality-wise i really like Air Canada's website. design-wise, LAN Chile's page looks awesome. It's somewhat hard to combine design and functionality/usability ... actually there are few airline pages that can combine both elements. SWISS's site is quite good when it comes to this ...

The SQ page could be better if the design was updated. I mean come on - SQ is a big player and has a website that looks so simple, it could have been made by a beginner. It's just tables and a header ... nothing special. If SQ really wants to bring back the romance of travel, it should begin right off, where you book the ticket -- a redesign would probably help here.

KLM's homepage is just plain bad. The usability equals zero as everything is really hard to find. And it constantly gives errors on Safari.

Come on, it just cannot be true that web site programmers exclusively program Internet Explorer exclusive material. A properly designed web site should be programmed by the idustry W3C strict/transitional standards and should be more css than html heavy. The page should be thoroughly tested on every browser that has a market share > 3% to cover as many people as possible.

I mean what can people do to book a ticket if they are on linux at work (yeah publishing offices for example, programmers, ...) or macs (designers, ...) and the page does not work properly in the native browser or at least firefox?!

[jjpb3]

For ease of booking (including finding out about fare options), my favorites are: LX, AA and SQ.

For visual appeal, MI, MH and SQ.

For ease of finding information (the information I tend to search for, anyway), CX and AA.

[Savage25]

nwa.com is probably the best I've experienced in terms of functionality.

[HUGE AL]

nwa.com is probably the best I've experienced in terms of functionality.

Really? I'm surprised. I've hated it ever since the last major update -- which was also when they stopped winning the awards for having the best website. It's a lot more cumbersome now than it used to be. Just my opinion.

[SQflyergirl]

Simple and Easy to understand no nonsense site: DJ's.

[UMD]

I think they are all almost the same except for a few bad ones especially those of the Chinese airlines and Garuda.

[KeithMEL]

My preferences would be DJ, QF, SQ and LA.
AA is also pretty good, but for the fact that they do not accept Australian credit cards for online bookings - so I either have to pretend to live in the UK, or place bookings on hold and call IndiAA up to finish the booking.

[singaporu_kooku]

For visual appeal, I like MI, MH, and HA.
For ease of use, lowcost airlines like DJ and TR are the best. SQ and QF are not far behind either.