The hottest new thing in Product Management

We are flying on vacation, and that is a reason to be happy. These days, however, it is also a reason to get frustrated. What used to be the masses of holiday crazy people on airports and train stations is now the complex jungle of paperwork required to be allowed on board of an airplane.

Seasoned travelers that we are, we did our research. Day in day out we monitored, checked, and rechecked. We did print our vaccine cards, and added an app online to show the QR code on our phones. We did a mandatory PCR test – which means doing actually 2, since single point of failure is too costly in this scenario and lab times dictate at least a 24h turnaround – and printed the results.

But still, of course, this wasn’t enough. While we followed the check-in on the TAP website, which indicated various requirements, the site became pretty confusing at some point. It spoke of forma that needed filling out, but didn’t provide deep-links to those forms. Instead, they forced you to exit the flow you were in right now (the check-in flow) and left you wondering where you just arrived.

Since the search term for Covid form ist exactly a precise one these days, even if combined with the airline or country you travel to, I ended up hopelessly lost. Having been in this situation before, i result to ‘brute force form filling’. It isn’t pretty, i admit, but i ended up filling in any form or app I thought even remotely related to traveling to Portugal.

The Passenger Locator Form (CLF)

Armed with 3 pieces of paper and a host of random new apps on my phone, I march up to the check-in counter. My self confidence was hit hard when the friendly check-in attendant asked me for the ‘passenger locator form’. Well, I said, of course I filled this out. I filled out so many forms, this must have surely been on of them.

Turns out this was not the case. There is yet another form. We understood from the attendant that the form was made mandatory only very recently, i.e. yesterday. While we scrambled to fill out the form on our phones, we were asked to move aside and make space for other passengers. This would have been devastating under normal circumstances, where fighting back into a momentous holiday-crazed queue would have been harder than securing an audition with the pope. Luckily, this evening there was a significant lack of passenger volume. Dodged a bullet, I guess.

Filling out the form was a challenge in itself. The flight number required case sensitivity, which isn’t necessary, as casing does not carry any information when it comes to flight codes. In other words, TP559 is the same as tp559, or Tp559, or tP559. Enforcing this in the form just feels unnecessary and a hassle. In addition, international country codes seem to be a problem for the form validator. My US prefix (+1) and number (650*******) simply didn’t compute. I had to resolve to entering my Austrian number using the +43 prefix.

We finally managed to get this done, and the attendant was happy enough to process us successfully.

Paper ain’t dead … Not yet!

Once we were seated and up in the air we were met with another surprise. The flight attendant asked us whether we had filled out the customer locator form. We said yes, with a glow in our faces that only last minute form fillers can relate to, when something last minute works out miraculously. She then went on to asking us if we also printed the form. Our jaws dropped – for just a second. When we said no she handed us a piece of paper which we filled out. After 45 minutes. When a pen became available. Same data as the digital equivalent, just paper format.

While I get the whole exercise, I wonder why this process must still be so 1990-esque. The airline could inform you in real time. They have my contact details stored permanently on my profile, as I am a registered user with their app installed on my mobile. Links can be presented as deep links where the link directly connects to the necessary artifact (such as an official form), and the full set of required steps can be shared with customers also, helping them anticipate what is about to come (and bring a $%#ing pen).

Forms are the new Instagram

I get it. I still have to do the filling out and do the printing. And yes, that is frustrating, but I’ll manage. There was a time when I felt I knew the lamest of all product management areas: operational data exchange and HTTP input forms. After this experience, it might as well be the hottest area generating lasting customer value and improve satisfaction scores.

Maybe I should apply at TAP, and present my proposal?