Cebu Pacific’s monumental failure: A new online reservation system ( from Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX )

Eto lang masasabi ko…. bilang isang ordinaryong mamamayan na gusto lang eh mag online ako para kumuha ng ticket dahil dun mapapadali ang pagreserve para kuha ticket nlaang bayad then go lipad. Sinong matutuwa na namomroblema kana sa flight mo dahil sa AKALA mo eh ok na yung ONLINE eh wla palang kwenta at papupuntahin karin sa ticketing office(mabuti pang di n ngonline waste of time) at sa halip na asikasuhin ka dahil hassle n sila eh nakapagyosi pa yung empleyado na supposed to be makakatulong sau??? Tama na ang pagalingan sa system or what ever. Ang siste dyn wag kayong magpalabs ng system na di ganun kaganda abay madami ang maabala sa gagawin yan. Ok yung mild error pero yan? Ikaw na may attendang kasal ng lets say 10am then di k makasakay. Well nasasabi nyo yan dahil hindi kayo ang nasa kalagayan nya at hindi kayo ang naperwisyo. Tignan lang naten kung sa inyo mangyare yan kung hindi umusok angtumbong nyo. Aminin……. (p.s. biglang pagalingan sa nalalaman sa pag dedevelop ah. try nyo mg ask sa experts baka mapahiya kayo. lam ko di sila ngpapalabas ng system na ganun kabugok. at dun sa sinasabing wag ibaba ang navitaire dahil sa ngyare dapat pa nga mas ayusin nila ang trabaho nila at mkakatulong din sa knila yun. kaya nga testing eh cyempre ayan ang result diba??? Last blog nya yun kaya wala ka pakelam kung anong gusto nyang sabihin. Peace!!!! ^^, magblog ka rin para maintindihan mo angpagboblog)

http://blog.kapenilattex.com/2008/04/20/cebu-pacifics-monumental-failure-a-new-online-reservation-system/#comments

eto ang kanyang written blog

UPDATE: Due to the shortcomings of this initial post, I wrote a follow-up post entitled Cebu Pacific’s failure isn’t in the software, it’s on the phone.

Melynn, who operates I-NAV Travel & Tours, got pissed yesterday. She arrived at the Cebu Pacific ticketing office at 10 in the morning. By the time she was done, it was already 3 in the afternoon. The office was simply overwhelmingly jampacked.

Nope, there was no Piso Fare promo going on. Everyone was doing their transactions manually because Cebu Pacific just changed their perfectly fine online reservation system with a massively confusing online facility made by Navitaire.

I don’t know precisely why Cebu Pacific replaced their previous online system. It was working fine last time. But a few weeks ago they changed it and it is now what it is.

At first the bugs seem to be really simple, and as a web developer myself I understand how bugs such as this could happen:

That’s a screen shot of the online reservation system jumbling its div tags in Internet Explorer 7.0.

And the online reservation system absolutely doesn’t work in Firefox 2.0. Or at least doesn’t go beyond the flight search page. Which renders it useless for FF users. I wonder how it is in Safari.

However, the above are simple bugs really. It’s easy (at least for me) to excuse these kinds of errors.

But along the way they also changed things that shouldn’t be changed. A guy named Phen commented this on a previous thread about Cebu Pacific’s service:

I used to fly Cebu Pacific for my personal trips, the reason being cheap. However with what happened to me last April 4, 2008 for my Davao-Cebu flight, I will never be on this carriage again. I was supposed to fly to Cebu at 6.30 am, I was there at Davao airport 5am. Upon checking in, I was told that I couldn’t take the flight because my ticket wasn’t confirmed! I purchased it online with confirmed status clearly indicated in my print-out. The not-so-customer-oriented staff pointed out that the status for payment was pending, which was written at the bottom part of the ticket. Who on earth would think that you were not able to pay when you got a confirmation?! And worst, nobody from Cebu Pacific thought of calling me to let me know. I was denied right on the spot, and when I asked for their assistance to at least get me in, the lady in the check in counter just instructed me to go to the ticketing office.

Here comes the worst part, no one from the ticketing office had the consideration to prioritize me or give me a confirmed reservation for the next flight at the least. The ticketing staff, Mr. Jonathan Leonor, just told me to wait so that they could check. I was waiting already for an hour, and got the same response when I asked for a reservation. He had even the gut to go out for a cigarette break, what kind of staff are these? [Is Cebu Pacific hoodwinking its passengers into empty flights?]

I verified the above with my wife, and she said it was true. Their e-tickets now have two statuses that you have to check: reserved and paid, and instantly confusion is introduced into the system. Let me illustrate:

• Reservation is pending and payment is pending. Can you board the plane? No.
• Reservation is confirmed and payment is pending. Can you board the plane? No.
• Reservation is pending and payment is confirmed. Can you board the plane? No.
• Reservation is confirmed and payment is confirmed. Can you board the plane? Yes.

There is exactly one and only one set of conditions where you can board the plane, and that is when both reservation and payment are confirmed. Why did they have to break the two down and confuse the passengers? This disambiguation which instead of making things clear has led to utter confusion is an act of monumental stupidity on the part of both Cebu Pacific and the software developer Navitaire.

Passengers do not care if either their reservation or their payment is confirmed or not. Passengers only care if they can board the plane or not. This is the question that needs to be answered, and clearly Cebu Pacific does not answer this question clearly in their system, and the result is pissed, inconvenienced passengers who have suffer the hassle of being turned back and made to cancel their travel plans because Cebu Pacific did not make things clear to them.

Yes it sounds cliche, but I really have to say it here: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Cebu Pacific should not have changed their previous online system. Or at least Navitaire should’ve entered a more intensive QA phase wherein they hallway-tested the results of their system where it would be revealed that their e-tickets are absolutely confusing.

So for the record: Avoid Cebu Pacific at all costs. At least for the next few months — until they fix their system, or bring the old one back.