[coldcode]

You must understand why this is not possible to do. D.O.T. rules apply to any agency that collects money for air travel. Everything on that page is subject to rules that change continuously and you can get fined massive amounts if you guess wrong. My employer's lawyers are incredibly paranoid about any UI change as we in the past had to pay a huge penalty because a few words were incorrect. So we wind up being stuck with all sorts of idiotic messaging and other crappola.

Now anyone who does not collect money is exempt, like Google Flights or Hipmunk, and they can design anything they want. But an airline or OTA that collects the money has to deal with the DOT and its insane rules and the paranoid lawyers.

I like the design though, very nice.

[dubcanada]

Then why do all the different airlines have different UI's?

While what you say is correct, you can easily redesign UI and follow the rules.

[Bluestrike2]

I think his point is more along the lines that regulatory burden and concern for the possible cost of error disincentive for change that effectively borders on paralysis rather than it being a physical reason preventing changes. The same sort of obstacles you see with large companies, but with an extra layer of possible fines on top.

A few years back, a designer blogged about a similar redesign for American Airlines. He was contacted by one of AA's in-house designers, who wrote about the internal politics and hurdles that get in the way of changing things. AA later sacked the designer for violating his NDA and the articles were deleted from the blog, but the entire episode was pretty interesting. If you're interested:

Copies of the Dustin Curtis & Mr. X posts http://www.flipthefunnelnow.com/dustin-curtis-%E2%80%93-dear...

Aftermath http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml

Even if a redesign doesn't touch any of the regulatory verbage and requirements, it still has to go through largely the same pipeline of internal approval as if it did. So even minor changes are viewed the same as significant ones.

Take the boarding pass. Given the limited amount of information present, redesigning them for a better experience should be a fucking no-brainer. No matter how long you search, I doubt you'll find anyone genuinely satisfied with their boarding pass. They're big, ugly, and reasonably unclear at a glance. You see tons of redesign experiments online, but no airline ever seems to take the hint or be inspired by them. Here's a semi-recent one that I love:

http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding-pass/

Beautiful typography, perfectly sized for your passport, and easy to read at a glance. Throw in the time difference and predicted weather for your destination, and the redesign is utterly perfect. What's not to love? And yet, nothing.

I see two big problems with the status quo in that regard: first, you the almost reactionary mindsets that seem to become not only more common, but also even more reactionary, as a company grows. Self-deceptive thoughts like "change is scary/costly/will scare away all the customers" are pretty damned powerful. Along with a lack of genuine demand for the change in the first place: bad UI hurts customers and drives away sales, but quantifying it directly in a way that makes it a priority in itself is difficult. They're all the more powerful by the fact that they originally stem from genuine concerns. And these attitudes are practically everywhere. Hell, even apple.com took the better part of a decade to see a significant shift in its UI + design:

http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/the-evolu...

It's really no wonder nothing changes. Until we start to see shifts in those attitudes, we're going to be largely stuck with the same bad UX in far too many places. :(

[antjanus]

Can confirm, redesigns are scary on the money machine. The more cash your engine cranks out, the less likely you will be to experiment. Experiments will fall on low-risk categories, not something as significant as ticket purchase.

[AJ007]

Not as scary as how much money your losing because of abandonment.

[coldcode]

It depends on whether their lawyers are willing to take a chance. The rules actually change all the time so you have to keep up to date. Some people are more willing to take a chance than others.

[colmvp]

Exactly. I did design work a few years ago on a very well known airline in the U.S. and it wasn't much of an issue to re-design the checkout flow.