Several days ago, Scott O’Leary (aka CO Insider), a customer service exec with Continental Airlines, posted some information on a nice (beta) addition to Continental’s mobile website:
Starting today, we’re proud to offer our FlyerTalk community a preview of our new Gate Information product, which will first be introduced via our mobile site using the link above and will ultimately be available via continental.com and LCDs installed in our gate areas starting later this year. Like our current Flight Status functionality, this feature will be available for flights scheduled to depart current day, yesterday and tomorrow.
New features include:
* Expanded Flight Status, including the aircraft number (that’s for you, rkkwan) and a new “Where is this aircraft coming from” feature (great idea, cigarman)
* Seat Maps, including a full aircraft view
* Upgrade Standby Lists, including real-time booking totals, the list of customers who have been upgraded (including via our Elite Upgrade Automation), and the list of those who have been added to the upgrade standby list. In the future we plan to add an “estimated upgrade rank” for those customers standing by, but that piece is still in development
* Flight Standby Lists, including high-level availability information, the list of customers who have been cleared, and the list of customers who are still standing by
* Inflight Amenity Information, including flight and aircraft-specific information about what food, beverages, inflight entertainment and in-seat power (no need to keep memorizing those aircraft numbers)
I hope you’ll agree this is a good start, and we’re proud to be the first airline to offer this information beyond the gate area. We look forward to your feedback, and to our public launch later this Spring. You’re welcome to post your feedback here, or via email to [email protected].
This addition may not seem that exciting to casual travelers, but frequent travelers (and especially those who are elite members of the airline’s OnePass program) CRAVE this sort of information. The working preview site has been very well received on the FlyerTalk forum. For some time, fellow SkyTeam member Delta has posted this sort of information on some gate displays, but Continental’s adding it to the mobile website is a nice step forward — and should result in an improvement in customer service, since travelers can check more information themselves and free gate agents to handle more complicated requests. It’s a nice move by the hometown airline.
UPDATE (02-12-2008): The Chronicle finally decided to cover this news. Readers of FlyerTalk and this blog had the news several days sooner.
