Last night we tried to check in online for a flight with US Airways/America West. Ultimately we were unsuccessful, receiving one of those frustrating errors where they acknowledge your reservation exists, but ask you to speak to a representative at the airport the day of your flight.

But their check-in interface is horrible. Dated and ugly. Oh, and hard to use. This was my favorite part:

[nb: I edited the screencap slightly to fit in the space here]

That pull-down menu is asking you to select which airline you’d like to use for your frequent flier miles. Presented in the most arcane form imaginable, the two-letter airline codes. What? You mean most people don’t automatically know that TG is Thai Airways International? Or that OZ is Asiana Airlines? (I cheated, I looked here).

Those codes are for industry insiders, not consumers. It’s sheer laziness on their part to fail to create a system that is usable. It’s hard to imagine how anyone thought that was a good solution for the design, it’s hard to imagine how that got designed, it’s hard to imagine how they failed to test it, and it’s hard to imagine how they failed to make changes based on that feedback.

This is really simple stuff here. There’s some big-ass lameness at US Airways.