Last time, we started our journey into flight booking flows by discovering when, where (to and from), and who (at least how many people) will board that plane. However, there are still some additional necessary details to ask your passengers, such as who exactly they are, what kind of bags they have, or the method of preferred payment. And well, some not so necessary details too, regarding extras from the base fare. The revenue generated from selling ancillary products and services are particularly crucial for ultra-low-cost (ULCCs) and low-cost carriers (LCCs), based on their business model. And how you ask your users for information or to buy extra stuff during a booking flow is what, we believe, makes the difference.

With over a decade of digital design experience in the aviation industry, at Mito Digital we know booking flows inside and out, with all their peculiarities. And believe us, there are a lot. Selling a flight ticket looks simple, but in harsh reality, it’s an edge case nightmare. Having one of the largest ultra-low-cost airlines, Wizz Air as our major client, and having designed the booking engine of the new Icelandic airline, PLAY, we’ve gained a lot of hands-on experience over the years. And luckily, we also like to talk about it – so here is part two. 

Passengers

Let’s take up just where we left off. We know how many passengers will travel from where, to where, and when. But who exactly are these people? As an industry trend, answering this is usually the third main step of the flow. Although, that might be a bit of a rush. Why ask personal details when you don’t even know if they will add any ancillary items, such as bags or a rental car? Again, maybe your user simply wants to calculate the costs of traveling to Costa Rica with two tireless teenagers, a mildly friendly cat and a certainly fragile violin. Yet again, meeting endless input fields early on will only make him/her exit the flow. Yes, backend limitations often stand in the way of good UX – still, we suggest this is the latest step that technology allows.

Ideally, saved companions could also be added to the passenger list. If you often travel with your wife, your 14-year-old teenager and her best friend’s cousin’s daughter, once saved, you should be able to select them as companions in, say, a drop-down list. Cool, right? A bit of advice, however: pay extra attention to make the saving process all transparent, together with making those passenger details editable.

Speaking of text fields, error handling is of high importance. As a rule of thumb, buttons should never be disabled. Have it enabled, and use error messages both there and at the location of error, indicating it by highlighting. Also, where possible, use on the fly error checking: if, for instance, the “@” is missing from the e-mail address, notify your users without them having to click on the CTA button. In the case of phone number formats, imagine how less the chance of error would be if passengers could simply select their country in a drop-down list, thus automatically revealing their calling code in the right way.

A lot of input fields also mean a lot of data to type. And, surprise, most people are not really into typing. For your customers, you ought to make this as easy as possible by using predictive solutions such as prefills, or identifying them by scanning passports and other IDs.This is the step where special assistance can be required by passengers with disabilities such as hearing loss, visual impairment, or those in need of wheelchair assistance or oxygen mask support. Or well, some emotional support animal. (Nope, no peacocks are allowed.) As this “Passengers” step preferably occurs later in the flow, it is fine to “frustrate” your users by asking about this sensitive information.

There are many types of baggage (and sizes and prices), no wonder passengers easily get confused. How many pieces, centimeters and kilograms are they allowed to bring aboard? Can they actually bring it aboard, or do they need to put away that fragile vase and family gold stash in their handbag to be sure it will be safe? For which services do they need to pay extra, and what are already included? (In the case of LCCs, one small handbag is usually free to take aboard, while to the regret of many, the so-called cabin bag is usually not free anymore.) Important questions, for which your customers should have instant answers. Precisely designed animations and colorful interfaces in themselves don’t help much, if these information are not properly and carefully communicated.

Another interesting question is how you show the price of checked-in bags. What if, for instance, unit price is shown per kilogram? This way, your users would definitely feel that buying a larger quantity is cheaper. Yep, just like when buying vegetables at the grocery store – only, instead of 20 kilos of apples (well, that is if you really love apples), you ask for 20 kilos of baggage. We did try this approach. Spoiler: it did not work.

Talking of checked-in luggage, there also are special ones – mostly sports equipment for ski-, golf- or bike-lovers. As a rule of thumb, you should never forget about sports lovers. And parents. You should never forget about parents and strollers either. At PLAY airlines, there is an option called “odd-sized bags”, covering basically any baggage that are larger than the large ones.

When it comes to ancillary products, it’s easy to turn to dark patterns. You obviously want to sell that extra / larger / heavier bag, but it’s important that you don’t do it at any cost. We believe that white patterns (well, sometimes a bit of light grayish ones) are the way to go – and by increasing user experience thanks to them, you are on a good way to increase revenue as well. Asking your users, for instance, if they are sure about not having selected a bag is not a dark pattern. But preselection is one that often occurs. However, even that can be good: sometimes it helps them and makes their life easier. For example, if someone travels with one type of baggage one way, (s)he will probably travel back with the same one. (Except if you happen to buy a new wardrobe. Or a cello, for that matter).

When designing the booking flow of the Icelandic startup airline, we conducted a usability test with some interesting takeaways. Long story short, PLAY was right in the end – and not because the client is always right (well, that too.) 
Below, you can see two different kinds of layouts we designed: one that our client preferred, and one that we did.

Of course, flight transfers make it all a bit more complex, or rather complicated. For each flight, you need to display a different seating chart, so each passenger can select a seat for each flight leg. Yep, that means that in the case of two people and a simple round trip, you’ll have eight seat maps. Users also need to be able to move across those, while understanding where in the process they are. The main question is, do you start by showing the seat map of the first leg for all passengers, or the map of all legs for the first passenger? In our experience, the most user-friendly and transparent solution is the former one. This also gives you the chance to iterate the preferences of the passenger(s) over the following flight leg(s). Again, a good kind of preselection.

It’s nice to have the feature of saving seats (alongside companions), so that preferred seats (such as those with extra legroom) will either be the only one listed on the map, or one of them will be randomly shown. Another idea that would be worth coming to existence.

Once again, don’t forget about parents. Seats usually can’t be selected for infants, as they are technically tied to one particular passenger. But in reality, they can travel with anyone – no first or emergency rows, though.

Seat selection, however, should never be forced. There are some definitely dark patterns here which you should try to avoid. In the case of LCCs aiming for ancillary revenue, sometimes it’s quite hard for users to manage to skip this step. But it shouldn’t take much more than clicking one button.

Of course, there are many edge cases, what ifs and infinite variations of possibilities to be prepared for. Or to not be prepared for. Because some of them, such as taking a cello onboard, are so edge case-y that they are simply not worth the needed development resources. Have you ever seen a cello aboard? Exactly. There are only around a few hundred cases such this a year. They are better off being handled manually.

Again, never forget to constantly communicate with the user, giving them either reassurance or direction during the process. Buying flight tickets can be stressful – help them. They will be grateful. You will be successful.