Friday 23 November 2012

SQ Online Check-in

I just checked-in my flight to KL. I am flying with Singapore Airlines as usual.

When I was doing the online checkin, there was a new field (Visa Required) displayed on the screen. I was told that I need a Visa.


I had been to KL for many times and I am not aware that I need a Visa to enter KL.

KingFisher and New Airport

Last time when I went to India for hiking, I got two new experiences.

1: Taking KingFisher Airline
2: Using the new international terminal in New Delhi.

Before that, I used to take Jet Airway which I think is the best airline in India. They provide quite good international and domestic flight services when I was working in India. However, while I took the Jet Airway last time to Delhi, it seemed that the service quality was dropped and it drove me to try King Fisher.

King Fisher is a very famous beer in India, like Tiger in Singapore. When they started the airline business 2-3 years back, I already heard that it was even better then Jet. However, I did not have a chance to try.

Eventually it proved I made a correct decision and their service was generally better than Jet who also had fligh to Leh around the same time. Queue managemnet was better, they got more staffs with smiles, you felt you were taken care and more importantly, both our flight and Jet's flight were delayed for 2 hours. We got breakfast at the terminal while Jet did not. Thumb Up!

After arriving Delhi, I went to the international airport. And it becamse a new international airport. The old terminal was still in use few days back. I guessed it was in a transision period and some flights were using old terminal and some of them were using the new one.

My impression was like the combination of KLIA and Sydney airport.



Not so many people over there and there were many shops still under renovation. Air-con did not work very well, the new preimum lounge was not able to provide any good food. However, it improved a lot.

But, what will happen after the full operation? 

Login and Buy

Didn't write here for quite a while and quite some changes for me.

Because of the new job, I need to play around with lot of different apps. Some of them are quite good and some of them are poorly made.

When I play around these apps and trying to buy something there, I face one problem. Why I am asked to register for an account?

Fundamentally, when a merchant is going from offline to online, they are moving their stores to internet. It could be fairly simple. What they need to do is just:

  1. Setup a shopping cart - It could be done within an hour.
  2. Upload their product catelog - Well... is going to take a while but no better option.
  3. Setup an online cashier - it could be also done with an hour.

That's all, and this is just easier than setting up a normal retail store.

Asking a buyer to register an account so that they can purchase anything online is just identical to ask the buyer at the shop to fill a membership form so that they can pay. I am sure that is just a gate to stop a business for a businessman.

I can understand the need of collecting user profiles for further marketing purposes. In the retail world, none of these could be collected anyway and there are still business doing very well.

So why a registration is needed?