He mentions in his post that he did know about a lot of the channels that website refreshes have to go through, and understands the bureaucracy behind a significant undertaking. What he also mentions is that he’s lucky enough to have been a part of several projects were instead of concern for everyone’s ego’s and pet projects those who were hired to redesign a website were trusted to do their jobs, and make accommodations later.

The problem he saw was definitely deeper than the front-page, and his solution was actually a very honest and simple one. Change, now. You are losing business, and you don’t have to. Why make bureaucracy an excuse, for a company that’s a very bad one. It means the company is being pulled in too many directions and should fire a lot of people, and reorganize others. Airlines specifically do a large portion if not a majority of business online, and in the AA response there didn’t seem any risk involved in simply changing the website and dealing with everyone after.

If it was my job, and I was forced into that level of complacency where my time was well-spent telling off bloggers, than I’d start shopping for a new one, or take the risk of implementing a design I was hired to do and accept the risk and the reward that it may bring.

I’d agree that upper management could benefit from Seth Godin’s recent post about catching up with your online presence, but none of that changes what Ryan said — The tone of what Dustin wrote was from the perspective of “How can everyone else be so stupid to not do this instead?” He doesn’t apologize for saying the design team are idiots and that they should all be fired. He just blanks out what he said before and posts the response. But it’s still the same song and dance “Well someone else is a complete idiot that never gives any thought to this.”

Is he wrong? Maybe not. Does he have anything to back up his opinion other than that it’s the most convenient belief? No.

“How was your flight?” “Horrible. Never fly Delta/Air India on a flight to/from London/random Congolese airline again.”

Holiday’s point is valid. Redesigning the AA website is pure fuckery when improving AA’s actual flight experience to a point where it was superior would have millions of customers jumping through any and all hoops they have to buy tickets. Calling out AA for their web design take some degree of boldness, but it’s born of a mindset almost entirely disconnected from real world results.

Carlos

@hockeynuts

Your point, however, is still good.

Now you could be right that their website is not a priority. Perhaps AA’s focusing on some more important, profitable initiative (e.g., new entertainment consoles). I’d like to believe that. But it’s more likely that AA is just not a very technology-focused company. The website will never be a strategic priority for the company, especially one that annually flirts with bankruptcy.

Perhaps Dustin is merely pointing out the immense benefits from a small investment in the website that could have a huge impact to customer experience. Now the politics to implement such a small investment are abominable (when I was at Amex, changing the background color on americanexpress.com cost well over six figures). But most of the politics exist from culture and inertia, not some overly complicated technical issue that naive 22-year olds cannot comprehend. This is a management issue, not a complex R&D puzzle.