Yeah, I know, I couldn’t resist the title, really. American Airlines has officially launched its mobile website, though unfortunately it only uses auto-redirection, and no m.version is available. Hopefully they’ll fix that. Anyways, Mobile AA.com offers a simple mobile-optimized interface for mobile flight check-in, as well as the ability to check flight schedules and get airport weather conditions.
There’s also a handy link to visit the full HTML site if you’re on a mobile that can handle it and need more access. According to Yahoo! News, an updated version will be available later this spring, featuring the ability to book flights, change reservations, and a host of other features.
American Airlines is currently also testing the Paperless Boarding Pass program in Houston, and this could easily be implemented using the mobile web, as well. If you’re flying out soon, why don’t you give it a go?
Hopefully the UK airlines are taking note, I predict that the budget airline over here may do this first if AA are successful.
AA is my favorite airline for a reason and this is part of it. They also have the best service/leg room combination.
I am trying to access http://www.AA.com from my E61i and it keeps taking me to the full AA.com site, not a mobile version. Bummer. I was hoping to play for a few minutes.
They’re not yet handling the redirect from the Nokia built-in browser yet. I get the same result on my E-70.
But, try your Services (e.g. WAP) browser in your Media folder – site comes up fine.
I think the 2008 will be the real start for mobile travel. I couldn’t get this to work on either browser on my E61 but it worked on my PDA.
With booking capabilities coming soon, I can see this being a big hit but the way information is presented is very important. It’s worth noting that phone web sites are not going to be used like pc websites, people will just not type lots of information into a phone interface. It has to be quick and easy with minimal input by the user. Making people scroll to fill in a search entry page is not the way forward and makes it seem laborious to the end user and puts people off.
I can see with barcode check-in coming this year that mobile travel will become a lot bigger in the future.
Mark
Actually, I was able to get the mobile site (for the screenshot above) on my N95 with nothing extra. However, I would still much prefer an M. to take you directly to the mobile version.
I just seen there is another Ricky here so any comments i make will be under Ricky C. Sorry for the confusion.