The average time to complete the task across all airline sites was about 17 minutes. Time to complete the same task by calling the airline on the telephone averaged 3 minutes. Designing efficient and usable web sites should be a top priority to remain competitive in the e-commerce market with other airlines. If sales plan to be increased via web site ticketing, these types of usability issues need to be addressed. It will be more difficult for the airlines to discover they have so many unsatisfied customers because they will not be at the ticket counter expressing their frustrations.
Major airlines consider discounted Web fares.
USA Today, pp.