Wap Review

SeatGuru.com now has a mobile site. Thanks to Kevin Tofel at James Kendrick's jkOnTheRun.com for discovering this site and sharing it.

SeatGuru, which has been on the full web for five years, tells travelers something they never know enough about until too late - airline seats. The site has tables comparing seat width and pitch and in-flight amenities for all the aircraft types in the fleets of 29 airlines. The best part of SeatGuru are the detailed seating charts which show the locations of power ports, restrooms and galley and give each seat a color-code; white for a typical seat, green for a particularly good seat - usually one with extra log room, yellow for a not so good seat that doesn't recline fully or is near a restroom and red for a truly bad seat which usually means one with multiple problems.

Mobile SeatGuru has the same color coded seating charts as the full site. It's easy to navigate: first pick your airline and then choose the aircraft from a list. A typical seat map page is about 1 KB of markup and 25 KB of images which just about any WAP2 browser should be able to handle. The charts themselves are 200 px wide. The site works well on QVGA devices or any browser that can resize images to screen width, like recent versions of the Openwave browser and Opera Mini. Even on the 176 px screen of the Motorola RAZR which doesn't resize images or support horizontal scrolling you can still see all the relevant information as the 24 pixels that are cut off are just white space and the right-hand border. If the images are to wide to display properly on your phone, the Google Transcoder does a great job with this site.

Emulator images courtesy Openwave Systems Inc. Openwave and the Openwave logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Openwave Systems Inc. in various jurisdictions. All rights reserved.

FlightStats.com has a new mobile flight tracking service that covers international as well as domestic flights. According to their website FlightStats aggregates information from airlines, airports and government agencies around the world to provide the most complete possible flight status information. FlightStats seems to deliver what they claim, giving me estimated flight arrival information for en route flights in the US and Europe including domestic Russian flights. Data seems scarcer for some parts of the world. For flights within China and Kenya, for example, FlightStats was only able to give schedule information.

FlightStats' PC site is great for travelers and aviation buffs. There's a ton of options and information there like historical on-time data by flight and airline, country by country maps showing all the airports in each country, current weather conditions at each airport, airline and airport phone numbers and local maps.

The FlightStats mobile site (www.flightstats.com/go/Mobile), on the other hand, does only one thing which is to tell you when a flight will depart and arrive. To use it you do have to know the airline code and flight number. Enter those two bits of information, optionally change the date which defaults to today and hit submit. Within a few seconds you should have the current status of that flight.

This sort of simplicity is a real virtue for a mobile web site. Having a single purpose simplifies the user interface increasing the likelihood that first time users will be able to get the information they need quickly and with a low frustration level.

AeroPlanner is a flight planning tool for pilots. Registration at aeroplanner.com is required before you can use the mobile site. There are various levels of membership from free to $250/year. Even the free membership includes full  access to the mobile site which has  charts, flight plans, detailed aviation weather reports, aviation calculators and a comprehensive directory of airports with landing fees, hours and fuel prices.

Track commercial flights in North America on your mobile device. FlightView shows departure and arrival and live flight status maps.

AirWX is a free service that gives US pilots instant access to weather and other aviation related data on their mobile phones.

Services include current and forecast weather maps, pilot reports (PIREP), distance between US airports, airport maps and information, Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs), conversions between miles/knots and °F/ °C and flight tracking by N number. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

Priority Pass is a service that for an annual fee lets members use over 600 business airport class lounges at over 100 airports.  The Priority Pass mobile site lists participating lounges by airport and provides directions to help you find each lounge.

The mobile edition of the International Aircraft Sales, inc. website lists aircraft for sale and has a worldwide directory of aircraft dealers and insurance and financing agencies.  The well organized for sale database lists hundreds of new and used aircraft ranging from Piper Cubs to 747s for sale or lease at locations around the world. Source: Mobility.mobi

Free searchable community mobile airport directory for pilots and travelers, listing over 40,000 world airports, with airport codes,  latitude, longitude, elevation, live weather and visitor comments.

WhereThere lets travelers share reviews of hotels and restaurants in and around an airport or city. Search by airport code or city, state and country. For each location WhereThere returns the aviation and 3 day weather forecasts and mini reviews of local restaurants, hotels and attractions. There are also links to airline and hotel chain mobile sites and to the mobile versions of Google Local and the Flightstats flight tracking site.

Toll free numbers for major airlines. Thes numbers will only work in the US

Justin over at MOpocket mentioned that online travel giant Orbiz has launched a mobile site and added " I hope WAP Review guy does a review of it". I'm happy to oblige, so here goes.

According to Alexa, Orbitz.com is the number two (in web traffic) online travel agency behind Expedia. In terms of mobile web adoption Orbitz also trails Expedia whose UK operation has had a wml-only Web site for several years. The new Orbitz site is much nicer than Expedia's, however. Orbitz Mobile (mobile.orbitz.com) features a simple, intuitive interface, good for today's harried travelers. The site restricts itself to just four functions.

• Flight Status for 27 airlines from around the world including many that do not have their own mobile site. Notably absent are US low fare carriers Jet Blue and Southwest.
• My Trips, which lets you view itineraries that you have booked on Orbitz.
• Find Hotels, which lists hotels with current availability in 19 major US cities plus Cancun, Mexico.
• Contact Orbitz with click to call links to Orbitz US 800 and international phone numbers.

There are mobile travel sites with more features than Orbitz but few if any that are as easy to use. The interface isn't flashy but it's clean, uncluttered and intuitive which counts for more with me than flashiness. Accesskeys are used liberally speeding navigation.

There is one negative aspect of the user interface that I've criticized before on other sites A dropdown list (html select) is used to choose an airline on the flight status page. With 27 airlines in the alphabetical list that's a lot of clicking the D-pad down arrow on a typical handset - particularly if your airline is United or Virgin Atlantic. I'd prefer a GUI using only accesskey enabled links in a drill down. Meaning, the user first picks a range of letters 'A-E', 'F-H'... and gets a new page with only airlines matching the selected letter range. If you do it right and you don't have more than 100 airlines to choose from it only takes 2 clicks to select any airline. It does mean an extra page load and round trip to the server and back but that still beats all those clicks. The drop down only needs a single page load which can be faster (but with more total bytes transmitted) but requires a minimum of n/2 + 2 clicks where n is is the number of items in the list. On Obitz Mobile that's an average of fifteen clicks for something that could be accomplished with two. It's a trade off and may not matter depending on the phone. With a touch screen device the drop down wins but on a typical phone the links are faster. My latest phone scrolls quickly and the D-pad needs only a light touch so I'm less bothered by long dropdowns than I used to be but I still think it's a poor mobile design.

The Orbitz site loads quickly. The fast load times are partially a function of the small page sizes but web server capacity plays a part too. Over the last year, I've noticed that several of my favorite mobile sites have become so slow as to be almost unusable. I take this as an indication that the mobile web is becoming more popular. Content providers need to monitor response times and make bandwidth upgrades before users notice a slowdown. Nothing drives users away faster than slow page loads and timeouts. Orbitz Mobile is new so the speedy response may not last as more users discover it but for now it's a great choice for flight status on the go.

I'm less impressed with the Hotel Search. It's not really an interactive search, you pick one of the 20 cities and get a list of five hotels in each city that have availability for tonight. To actually book a hotel you have to call Orbitz - at least it's a click to call link. I guess that's in keeping with "keep it simple philosophy" Still allowing you to specify a date range, while still defaulting to tonight and listing more than five hotels in the results would add value without detracting from usability.

Orbitz Mobile's best feature is the fast and easy to use flight status. My Trips is good too if you use Orbitz to book travel. For Hotel Reservations there are better mobile sites. I also think Orbitz needs to add an interactive airline schedule that lets you see all flights from point A to point B. When your flight is delayed or canceled you want to be able to see what your options are on other airlines. Orbitz' competition including Expedia, Cheap Tickets and Sabre's "Virtually There" all have this feature on their mobile sites.

Timtable (all airlines including low fare airlines), gates/time, view reservations, weather. Simple, efficient interface.

This is the mobile site of CheapTickets.com, a major online travel agency. You can't book flights on the mobile page but you can view current flight arrival and departures and flight schedules and you used to be able to track flights in real time. These features work for most airlines. You can also view the itinerary of trips you booked on CheapTickets.com

As of August, 2006 the flight tracker seems to be broken!

Flight Status, Flight Schedules, Hotel Finder. If you create an Expedia account with a desktop browser you can view your itineraries. This is the UK edition of Expedia mobile. The US edition appears to be shut down.

Kayak.com is a relatively new travel meta-search engine which searches over 120 travel sites including all the major airline sites except Southwest, many hotel chain sites as well as many travel booking sites like Orbitz, CheapTickets. It includes a lot of sites you might not think of searching like AsiaRooms.com or Wegolo.com which specializes in European budget airlines. Kayak is purely a search engine like Google - it doesn't do bookings. You search for the lowest fare or for a hotel or car rental and then follow a link to a third party site like aircanada.com to actually book you travel. I really like the full web version of Kayak. I usually search there first as I've found that it consistently finds better deals on airfare and hotels than Travelocity, Orbitz or Expedia.

KayakMobile emphasises simplicity. The interface is very straight-forward and easy to use because you can only search for flights departing today and rooms for tonight. Which is actually a good idea for a mobile travel site, especially in the US where almost everyone has access to a computer. If I'm planning a trip tomorrow or next week I'll do it online on my computer not on my phone. But if I'm already traveling and my flight is cancelled or my plans change I'd be very likely to want to use my mobile to find a flight or room for today.

I wanted to like KayakMobile as the concept of limiting choices in a mobile web app is a good one and I really do like Kayak.com on the web. The flight search seems to like it would be most useful especially for the road warrior whose plans are always changing. Just punch in you departure and arrival airport codes and click the search button and you should get a list showing price, departure time airline and a click to call airline booking number.

Kayak worked reasonably well for me. There's a lot of flexibility in how you can enter departure and arrival points; airport code, US zip-code or city with or without state or country. If you enter something ambiguous, Kayak will prompt you with a short list of choices. Still, it is a beta and there were several areas that need work. The biggest one is that the phone numbers aren't clickable! That means that on the 90% of phones that don't have cut and paste you have to memorize or write the number down, exit the browser and dial. Almost all WAP 2 phones support the wtai: uri standard for click to call - why not use it? There are also some issues with international support. When I searched for flights from Asian departure points I got the error "Please enter a valid departure date" but of course there is no way to enter a departure date as all searches are for today only. I imagine that the problem is that it's already tomorrow in the Far East and Kayak is using a US date and time instead the current date and time at the departure airport. Interestingly, the hotel search doesn't seem to have this problem with Asian cities. Another area that needs improvement is that in over half the air searches I tried, I got "No flights available". I can understand that all flights today are fully booked. But in that case why not show the next available flight even if it is tomorrow.

You can also search for restaurants and check the weather at your destination. I didn't find the restaurant search very useful. If I entered a specific zip-code (you can't enter an address) it seemed to start searching from the city center rather from the zip-code I entered. Although you can filter the results by cuisine there are no reviews or any indication of price range. The weather feature does work well giving detailed information on current conditions

I learned about KayakMobile from Cameron Moll at Authentic Boredom who did an extensive writeup on it with lots of screenshots.

The Federal Aviation Agency's official mobile site is pretty barebones but does provide information on airport closures and delays for all airports and carriers in one place. There is also a directory of FAA and airline phone numbers and airline WAP sites.

Flight schedules

Flight status. Poor interface. You must first pick you airline from a multipage scrolling list which doesn't include all airlines.

Live arrival and departure information, weather forecasts and a guide to airport services, shops and restaurants including a unique "What's within 5 minutes of ny gate" interactive feature for the Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport.

Reserve a place on the shuttle between Prague airport and the city.

Scheludes,flight status, directory of shops and services and transportation information including bus and train schedules for the Krakow airport.  Phone numbers in listings are not click to call. Source Mobility.mobi