People Express to Be Hacked to Pieces (May, 1985) 
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By Paul G. Estev

If a business is starting a new, expensive touch-tone interactive phone
service, it should assess its real usefulness. New systems should be tested by
the real users as well as the system creators. All too often, businesses do not
notice that their systems have fatal flaws or are user unfriendly.

People Express, the growing economy airline (economy carrier) has started such
a new service that has many of the worst features of any Tone Activated Service
(TAS). Other services like this are George Bank by Phone, IBM-Audio
Distribution System, and Mobil Credit Check.

The new service is called "Pick Up & Go" and has been described in detail in
recent advertising. It is a system where anyone could reserve airplane tickets
for any People's flight using a telephone. Originally developed by AT&T, Pick
Up & Go should be going soon.

This service is in many ways like other TAS's, but unlike a voicemail system,
there is no real reward for exploring this system. With voicemail systems,
people acquire accounts that they can use. In Pick Up & Go, there are no free
plane tickets to get, because you can only book the flights. The tickets must
be picked up at your flight...and paid for then. Yet, it is an example of poor
design using this now common technology, which integrates phone systems with
data lines - in this case, the reservation computers.

People Express is known for their low prices, which gives them the competitive
edge to be known as the fastest growing airline as well as good investment.
This also has its drawbacks. Low prices mean low incentive for travel agents to
book flights on the airline. In addition, People's is well known for
overbooking flights while expecting many of the potential passengers to not
show up. People's instituted this service so they could get around the travel
agent problem. But it is expected that they will have more of the same problems
with the booking of flights, if not more of different problems...

This is how the system works: As with most TAS's, there is a voice that asks
for touch-tone input as to what date, time, flight, etc. you wish to take. At
first, a female voice asks you for a 7-digit identification number, which you
can make up (they suggest that you enter your phone number, so it is easy for
you to remember). You tell the people at People Express this number when you
pick up the tickets, so they know that it is really you who made the
reservation. In effect you are just giving them a password. So you enter your
seven-digit code then a '#.'  (Remember, you enter a '#' after each command, and
numbers can be either one or two digits. You will be prompted by the voice for
each entry.) Then you enter the month you wish to travel then a '#;' then the
date you wish to travel; then the coding for the airport you wish to leave
from; your destination; then the number of tickets you want; then your desired
departure hour.

(Follow the hour by an 'a' or a 'p' for a.m. or p.m. After this prompt, the
voice will tell you the two closest flights to the hour you indicate. It will
also check to see if any seats are available at this point.) Finally, you enter
the flight you desire. You are then told the price of the flights you have
booked. At this point you are looped back to the beginning, where you can hit a
'#' at each prompt and it will 'ditto' your previous entry. You can book up to
five seats per code, but you are able to enter a new code when you loop
back, in order to book ten, a hundred, or even thousands of flights, if you
are patient and devious.

Note again that you do not pay for your tickets until you get to the plane, nor
do you even tell them who you are, in fact you cannot if you wished to. In
addition, there is no provision to cancel reservations; you cannot do this if
you wished to either.

This system will allow anyone to reserve almost any number of tickets on any
flight leaving in the next two months or so. You can book a flight anywhere,
even to London (code-549). This is the way things should be for travelers, fast
and easy, but People Express is just waiting for people, travel agents, and
other airlines to take advantage. United Airlines could book whole planes and
clog up People Express just by making a phone call.

It is predicted that this system will be gone quite quickly, or the software
will be changed but this takes time as we all know. If they do not do away with
this system, there should be a commotion about hundreds of people waiting in
line for empty flights.

Some airport codes you may need to know are: 397-Newark, 529-Los Angeles, 626-
Orlando, 743-St. Pete. The codes correspond to the three-character initials
that every airport in the world has.

There are a few more things you can do after you are done booking your flight,
like *H#-Help, *B#-discard last entry, *D#-Delete last reservation request,
*R#-Review current reservation, *L#-Review all your confirmed reservations. At
this last prompt you can use the following commands: D#-Delete, K#-Keep,
X#-Exit this function.

The system itself is fairly user friendly, but the female voice should tell you
about the help function, you should not have to read about the help function in
a newspaper advertisement. The voice should also note that you must enter a '#'
after each entry, but it only does this after you make an error. You should
also be provided with the list of airport codes. (Actually, some are easy to
find yourself: DEN-336-Denver, SYR-797- Syracuse.) If People's really wishes to
encourage the system s usage, it should also have a toll-free number. In the
end, this service will result in confusion and reduced service, as well as
longer lines at the terminals. Those who have taken People Express flights have
both regretted and come to depend on overbooking. And there will be
overbooking: by people who want to play with the system, by people who make
mistakes, by people who do not mind booking a flight just 'in case' they plan
to travel, by travel agents who customarily book hundreds of tickets, and by
competing airlines who wish to do People Express wrong. This service will do
nothing but increase the problem. It is indicative of the lack of human factor
in creating these systems. It is surely a pity that big companies do not have
real people test their new technology for them. Marketing consultants and
programmers just seem to forget that it is people who use the products in the
end. It will be people who make mistakes using their new system, and it will be
people who will take advantage of this new system.