Flight reservations – Now you can make flight reservations online.
The choices have improved to the extent that a consumer—and the airlines as well—is confused by the myriad of possibilities available today. Let’s say that you want to make a flight reservation today for a flight tomorrow. The most direct, and the most time-consuming way, is to travel down to the office of the airline. It used to be that flight offices were available in downtowns of many major cities. You could walk into an American Airlines ticket office on Fifth Avenue in New York, for instance, and make a reservation. There are now many more ways to do it. One of the upstart airlines, Bluejet, makes it possible to do without going downtown at all. Bluejet’s ‘blue’ service allows you to make jet flights reservations via a servant who comes when you call a special number, takes the tickets information in front of you, then delivers the ticket back to you during the same day. That’s a true blue butler service for the person wanting a convenient way to buy a ticket.
Flight booking can be done in a number of ways, starting with one’s computer. United airlines offers a live chat option, which means that you can ‘talk’ to a live person using their ‘chat now’ function on the home page of their reservations site. By simply going to United.com and clicking on ‘reserve now,’ a real live person shows up who is willing to do your every bidding.
Flight reservations have never been easier, nor more complex, than they are today. In the future, if you need to make a flight reservation, simplicity will reign. At the moment, most online reservations are ‘dumb,’ meaning that they know nothing about you other than the fact that you would like to make a reservation and buy a ticket. In the future, reservations systems will know not only your seating preferences, but also that you have an Aunt in Omaha, Nebraska, who has a birthday on a certain day, and that you usually like to fly with your wife, two kids and a dog to Omaha a couple of days before in order to acclimate and go to your favorite steak restaurant.
The new website will not only book the airline and seats that you want, but it will also have a car waiting and a reservation for you, your aunt and your family at that restaurant. The restaurant will even know that you want your steak medium rare, and you like mashed potatoes but no broccoli as a side dish. They might even insure that your favorite red wine is uncorked and breathing an hour before you arrive!