Delta Air Lines redesigned the homepage of Delta.com, giving it a much more graphical, cleaner look, and consolidating a lot of booking features in a new user interface.
"It's not just a makeover—our new homepage is completely rethought and redesigned to give you faster, easier access to everything you need to plan and manage your travel," Delta says. "Now you can book, check in, see your flight status, check your mileage balance, get vacation ideas and more—all right on our homepage."
But, if you navigate beyond the homepage, the look and feel is the same as it has been for some time.
Delta says: "We know our homepage looks quite a bit different from the rest of our site now—but don't worry, we're working on that. We'll be making more updates in the coming months to give you a better, more consistent experience throughout our site."
When you start to book a trip on the homepage, a flight booking widget pops up with all kinds of functionality, including recent searches, SkyMiles rewards tickets, flexible date search, refundable ticket only search, certificate redemption, and also the ability to book hotels, cars, vacations and cruises.
There is a link from the homepage to baggage policy changes and also a link to a First Bag Flies Free promotion, an almost identical slogan to Southwest's Bags Fly Free motto.
However, the current landing page for Delta's First Bag Flies Free verbiage is a SkyMiles-American Express credit card promotion with no mention of anything relating to a first bag flying free.
But, as it turns out, there indeed is a new first checked bag for free policy for cardmembers holding a gold, platinum or reserve Delta SkyMiles credit card. The information isn't readily accessible from the homepage's First Bag Flies Free link, which is a tad misleading anyway.
Southwest doesn't charge for the first and second checked bags, and JetBlue gives a free pass to the first bag only.
Delta, meanwhile, is a leader among U.S. airlines in the push to unbundle ancillary services and routinely charges passengers $25 for the first checked bag and $35 for the second when paid for at the airport.
Asked about Delta's promotion, Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King says: "At Southwest, we still LUV your bags. We are the only airline that welcomes two checked bags free of charge for all of our customers and we are very proud of that distinction. We will continue to offer customers two free bags and no change fee when traveling Southwest."
Delta described its redesign on both its homepage and in the Delta Blog.
The blog post was written by Stacey M, described as the project leader for Delta.com and self service.
But, when you click on the Stacey M link above the blog post to find out more about the writer, the profile page is devoid of information and looks like this:
OK, Delta is off to an ambitious start, but admittedly has a lot of work to do on the redesign and the blog, too.