Airline Good UI/Bad UI
In getting to PDC, I took a flight out of Hartford to LA with a stop in DC. When I did the self-checkin, I was told that my originating flight was delayed and that I wouldn't make my connecting flight. I was asked if I wanted to look for other flights that day. I did, of course, and was told that there was nothing. I was asked if I wanted to check for other flights the next day. I did, of course, and was told that there was nothing.
Rather than give up, I called over an attendant and told her what I was told. She said that couldn't be right - no flights were delayed. I let her get me boarding passes and off I went.
About 30 minutes later, I was paged and sent to a gate. Apparently while the departing flight was on time, they were expecting bad weather that would delay its arrival, causing a missed connection, and would I like to get a seat on this flight to Chicago that was boarding?
So let's look at this - the first problem was that I was not given complete information as to why my flight was delayed. That's understandable to a certain degree, but it strikes me as something knowable. Telling me would've been nice and would've avoided confusion. In addition, the check for alternate flights should be mandatory and immediate. In other words, at the same time it was known that my itinerary couldn't be met, alternatives should've been posted. Further, if the return from that search was an empty set, an attendant should've been alerted. All of this would've made the experience better.
The other question is, how did the flight system not know that I could make a flight to Chicago, but a human could to page me? That strikes me as very odd.
On the positive side, I very much appreciated being paged. This was absolutely the right thing to do. The gate attendant was awesome. To round things out, the flight attendants on the flight to Chicago and from Chicago to LA were terrific - warm and funny. All of this is terrific UI - they are little things, but they make something that could've been at best a mediocre experience (and potentially a bad one), into a very good experience.
This is the kind of thing I see consistently in our own support - customers that have had troubles and have been given a potential solution, often get emails or phone calls if they haven't given us a "yes this works" to close the loop.