New Aer Lingus Website.

L

Laramie

Registered User
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Does anyone else find the new Aer Lingus website worse that the old one? When you looked at the old one you were able to get availability for a full month with prices attached....now it's only a week. I also cannot find out when some 2016 routes start. On the old one you were told the start dates. It also seems much slower to load.
 
I agree it's not great. They are quickly removing negative comments about it from their Facebook page. I hope it improves. The Ryanair website looks fantastic compared to it.
 
Grizzly said:
I agree it's not great. They are quickly removing negative comments about it from their Facebook page. I hope it improves. The Ryanair website looks fantastic compared to it.
Click to expand...
I agree too. Much more cumbersome, less relevant data displayed, also seems to take a lot longer to go through the booking process. How ever I'll still check the prices v. Ryanair because the seats are bigger and the staff a little more helpful once on the flight.
 
It's a step backwards as far as I am concerned. You could browse a whole month's flights, plus prices, plus days of flights and sometimes if you hovered your mouse over your preferred date you could find out that they only had a few flights left at this price. They would also tell you the commencement dates of their seasonal flights. Now you are restricted to a week of flights. It's driving me mad trying to find out their commencement dates to Ibiza plus a few other destinations.
I gave up yesterday and decided that Ryanair was actually easier to deal with. Both fly to where I want to go and Ryanair seems to be about €100 cheaper as well. Unfortunately their flight times are not as good as Aer Lingus. Why do companies do this? Next they will tell us it is what their customers asked for....the usual answer.
 
Having been on to their helpdesk and discussing it they told me to send any negative comments on the website itself that way the IT people will start to fix things.
 
I would suggest posting it on their Facebook page. They certainly need to look at their new system from a customer point of view. Having said that their Facebook page seems to be all about the Irish Rugby team rather than answering their customer questions that are building up.
 
They are furiously deleting all negative posts from their Facebook page. I don't think that the new website is going down well with the public at all. I really hope that they improve on it.

The new Ryanair website is not great either. I was checking flights to two different locations. The scroll bar held the dates of my previous search. So for example I was looking at a week in May for one destination and when I scrolled back looking for prices for the previous week it was showing me the dates for the previous search that I had done. I could have easily thought that I was actually looking at the previous week when in fact it was a random week for a completely different search.
 
I have also just attempted to use the new Aer Lingus site. Find it hard to understand why they have decreased the timespans available to view. That was one of the good things about the old version - that the average user could compare prices on any given combination of days fairly easily and decide on the best. Now it's ridiculously difficult to do that.
The new page has the feel of a site geared to business users on fixed timetables. Does this portend a move away from 'cheap' flights by Aer Lingus ? Hope that's not the case.
All the adverts on upgrading between the 'Go' and 'Return' prices also make it difficult to see both legs of the journey at the same time.
Pretty awful site now compared to the ease of use of the old version.
 
There are lots of problems with this site. For example the "start again" button to click on is now half way down the page. I hadn't noticed it and I was constantly clicking the back arrow up in the corner of the page to start again. The type is also very large, making it hard to notice other stuff further down the page.
Aer Lingus ran a news campaign about two weeks ago inviting it's customers to Book for Summer 2016. Yet a spokesperson on their Facebook page is saying that the summer schedule is not ready yet.
I asked a question on their Facebook page and it was deleted that same day without being answered to or replied to.
Someone has the idea that if they delete it all will go away!
 
An absolute joke of a site. Slow as hell. Ryanair's the same. Do they actually check with customers before going ahead with these new sites ?
 
I was scrolling forward the months to 2016 on the Aer Lingus website. A small thing. The arrow that you use to scroll forward moves about a bit so you have to move your mouse a bit as well to follow it's mood. Unlike the Ryanair arrow. It is in a fixed place.
I would like Aer Lingus to let people know somewhere on the site the start and end times of their various seasonal routes.
 
I thought you must all be exaggerating, as people don't like change. So I will test it out.

I want to book a flight to Birmingham on 25 November and return on 27 November

1) Click on Aerlingusl.com - it says "one moment please" - it should load immediately
2) the heading is about "dinner on the sofa" and "breakfast in New York" - where do I go to book?
3) OK, there it is on the top of the page. The ads should not be more prominent than the booking options
4)OK, I have selected the destination and the date. Where is the "next" button?
I scroll down - more ads about America - (the balance is all wrong here)
I am at the end of the page and there are two options "Begin your trip here" and "sign me up" - but I have already input the details
There is a feedback button on the right hand side - but presumably that's not relevant?
5) Scroll back up again
6) OK, there it is. It's at the top of the page. So tabbed down to location and dates, you have to be inspired to tab up to "Find Flights"
This is a basic error in website design. The next option should be below the last one.

7) The options are presented clearly. I choose the flight out and the flight back.
8) Continue - I am still being bombarded by ads for dinner on the sofa and Breakfast in North America. What a terrible waste of screen space.
9) What? I am back to the original screen? How did that happen?
10) I have gone back one page and I am where I was. It has retained the information.
11) I definitely did not press the "start again" button the last time, so how on earth was I bumped back ?
12) I click on Continue and it brings me to Passenger Information as I would expect.
13) I fill in the passenger information.- it's not clear to me if I am confirming my booking by SMS., I don't want to, but is it being chosen automatically? I assume not.
14)"one minute please"
15) I choose "no bags" I skip the seat selection and press Continue - I am back in the screen and it asks me to "Continue without checked Bags" - there is no need for such an extra step. It just annoys people
16) "One moment please" Loading
17) Now it's asking me to "customise my trip" - I don't want anything, so Continue

18) I fill in the card details - straightforward enough.

Overall
This site makes me feel stupid. Especially putting me back to the start page, when I had definitely clicked "continue"
 
Now to compare with Ryanair ( I am a shareholder in Ryanair)

1) click on Ryanair.com
2) For some annoying reason it comes up with flights from Knock. Aer Lingus had filled in Dublin automatically, which is much better for me.
3) I filled in Dublin and Birmingham and it gives me this month and next on the screen which is good. with Aer Lingus, I had to click on the calendar to find next month.
4) I choose the dates and right beside it is a highlighted "Let's go" . No scrolling up and down to find the button.
5) Seems a lot cheaper -= all flights out are 9.99
6) That seems odd, the flights back are much more expensive, so the total cost is higher than Aer Lingus. I feel that is sneaky.
7) Scrolled down to continue without having to fill in zero bags.
8) It is now asking me for my Ryanair Account. I am not sure if I have one. If I have it may be easier to fill in all the details automatically.
9) I have a note of a Ryanair account and fill in the user name and password. It is rejected.
10) I try again "Wrong user name or password" but it's not giving me any option to recover them. That is stupid.
11) I skip the account bit and fill in my name.
12) a new screen pops up asking me for contact details. Wow an SMS costs €2.49 compared to €1 for Aer Lingus. These should be sent free.
13) I select Mastercard, and the bill rises by €1.24 - I go back to Visa debit and it's free. Fair enough.
14) It doesn't ask for my street address - just Address City and postcode.
15)

Overall
Seems easier and more intuitive than Aer Lingus
I feel a bit annoyed when I saw outgoing flights for €9.99 and then all the flights back were €51.99 or thereabouts.
The big falling down is the failure to give me an option to reset my password on the account.
 
Afterwards I checked the Ryanair Account.

1) It allowed me to change my password easily.
2) When I logged in again, I got this

upload_2015-10-27_9-26-19.png

I don't want spam from Ryanair. So I will close it. I am back to the screen as a non account holder
3) Ok , I will sign up to see if it speeds things up - hopefully if there is too much spam, I can cancel.
4) After all that, there is no advantage in logging in. It remembers no information and I have to input it all again.

So I logged into My Account and filled in all the information.

I then went to book another flight and most of the information was filled in. So it's worth having a Ryanair Account.
 
Is there an up to date comparison of Aer Lingus vs. Ryanair. Google finds a lot of comparisons, but they are out of date.

I usually choose based on the airport I wish to fly to and the times of the flight, so there often isn't a choice.

Ryanair allows you to check in any time after booking the flight which is a big advantage over Aer Lingus which doesn't allow you to check in until 30 hours before the flights, unless you are prepared to pay more.

But what about reliability? Baggage charges etc? I always feel nervous that Ryanair will tell me my bag is too large or too heavy, although it has never actually happened.
 
I'll just throw in my 2 cents worth here as I used both sites this weekend to book a flight in April 2016 to Lanzarote.
Times and prices were within 10 mins and 10 euro of each other so no difference there.
The difference in the two sites was pretty big - Ryanairs site was so much simpler to use, and faster. The Aerlingus site crashed twice and took a "one moment" please age to go from the initial selection.
Also, as one poster said, with Aerlingus when selecting/moving from month to month - the forwards arrow moves on the page so you have to follow it with the mouse. Don't they test these things?
Another big thing was, with Ryanair I selected my flights then then could select bags and seats. This meant that it was simple to select two passengers, and only one bag, which was what we wanted. On the Aerlingus site I had the choice of selecting a low fare, with no bags, or a flexi fare with bags. So it was all or nothing for the two passengers. I presume I could have done some jiggery-pokery to select no bags on that screen and add them in later, but I didn't feel like getting more frustrated.
To be honest, I would have given Ryanair the business on the basis of their website alone, in comparison to Aerlingus's one.
Also, on a separate note, their planes were newer and had more legroom than the Aerlingus one. (We just flew out with Ryanair and flew back with Aerlingus this month).
 
I am chasing various flights to various destinations. I have also noticed that the Ryanair outgoing flight is considerably cheaper than the return flight to a few destinations. This is an old trick used in the early days but it seems it has resurrected itself again this year.
When Aer lingus gave you the option of viewing both the outgoing and return flights over a calendar month you could see the choices available, which to me was far better as I am always flexible in my travel arrangements. Having to scroll forward and back is not as friendly.
 
I generally fly Aer Lingus unless there is a big price difference over alternatives but I absolutely hate their new website. I've been looking at various transatlantic flight options for myself and various family members and it's so frustrating I'm close to giving up.

'One moment' must mean something different in Aer Lingus world.
The site looks horrible - the previous one seemed much more compact and you could see things at a glance.
Looking at 2-leg flights, there is very little separation between options - the gap between legs is the same as the gap to the next flight option.
When the flight options are 2 leg, you only get to see one day at a time - previously, you could see the cheapest day for a couple of weeks either side of your initial date.
If you want to look at multi-city, you have to pick a starting destination before you can pick multi-city - and then your starting selection has disappeared.
I've been dumped back to the home page several times even though I clicked continue and not start again (and my selections were lost)
You can't see seat availability when you're making your selection - I don't want to book a flight if all that's available is a middle seat in row 60...
Check-in seems longer now too.
When the site first went live a couple of months ago, they gave you the option of the classic site - which I always picked because the new one is so rubbish. Now the classic site has disappeared.

My best advice is to use the mobile site on an ipad/mobile - still works pretty well with less frustration. Overall, their migration to a new site has been very badly done - hard to believe they gave it to real customers to test.
 
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