Sunday, November 22, 1998

Time marches on past Southwest Airlines ticketing machines

By MARK BABINECK

Associated Press

HOUSTON -- A glitch from the past, the technology of the present and trends toward an online future conspired to kill Quicket.

The Southwest Airlines automatic ticketing machine is state-of-the-art 1980s technology, even allowing travelers to make their flight choices by touching the screen. That was pretty high-tech for an era when home computers were considered luxury items.

But now, thousands of people use their computers to buy airline tickets on the Internet, a practice expected to become increasingly common. Plus, Quicket suffers from the Year 2000 bug, meaning it reads credit cards that expire in 2000 as having expired in 1900. The technology in Southwest's Quicket machines is too outdated to be enhanced, said airline spokeswoman Linda Rutherford.

"But the larger reason is that, with the introduction of Internet booking, we saw the usage of automated ticket machines drop way off," Ms. Rutherford said of Quicket's demise.

The machines, which allow passengers to buy full-fare tickets on a moment's notice for that day's flights, are popular with business travelers on the go who don't have reservations. But Ms. Rutherford said nowadays those passengers are more likely to reserve their flight some other way.

Frequent Southwest flyer Tom Grainger still likes Quicket. He was disappointed to learn that the machines will be history by year's end in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, the only places where they're still in use.

"I'll have to use a travel agent, I guess. This is really handy. I hate to see it go," said Grainger, a regular on the routes between Dallas Love Field and Tulsa, Okla.

Grainger's alternative would please Steve Loucks, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents. Loucks believes the vast availability of online travel information makes agents more valuable than ever.

"The Internet helps our industry quite a bit," Loucks said. "I've had more travel agents tell me anecdotally that the Internet has left their clients more educated and yet greatly confused because of such a glut of information.

"It's much more difficult than before for the consumer because of all the misinformation. That's where travel agents help."

The amount of money made from tickets sold directly by the airlines still pales in comparison to the billions of dollars in travel arrangements made by professional agents each year, according to Loucks. Though airlines try to draw consumers away from agents to avoid paying commissions, Loucks believes flyers always will need professional advice.

"Most carriers out there only provide information on what they offer, so you're not getting comparative fare and schedule information, and that's where a travel agent steps in," Loucks said. "Furthermore, the reason why the travel agency community continues to sell 80 percent of airline tickets is that they are able to put together all of the components (of a trip) in a relatively short period of time."

ASTA noted a recent study that found 77 percent of travelers with Internet access still preferred to deal with a human voice when making reservations.

A check of major airlines found that, like Southwest, most are constantly enhancing their Web sites by offering Internet only-specials and frequent flyer bonuses. Houston-based Continental Airlines is following suit, but it's actually enhancing its on-site ticket machines.

"We're definitely committed to it," Continental spokesman Dave Messing said. "It's a product we need to have under any circumstances."

Inside Flyer magazine's Randy Petersen said ticketing kiosks used by Southwest, Continental, Alaska Airlines and Northwest Airlines never have caught on like the carriers hoped. Travelers learned that electronic ticketing still couldn't save them from chores like checking baggage and fumbling with paper.

"I don't think they had the traffic they expected when they first invested in those," Petersen said from his Colorado Springs, Colo., office. "I watch out for those machines, and I think on the last three trips I took I saw one person using a kiosk."

Southwest's machines don't offer nearly the features of Continental's newer kiosks. Their technology is so obsolete they can't be updated, so they're going the way of eight-track players and manual typewriters.

Some Quickets were serving fewer than 10 customers a day, Ms. Rutherford said.

"It's kind of like seeing a lonely pinball machine in a video arcade," she added.