On Canadian Airlines Wiki Page it said they did, But on another one, it said they did. So, Who had the first website?

I think WN was the first US carrier. Could be wrong.

You could put some of the big names into Archive.org and see what pops up.

It appears that Lufthansa was first - November, 1996 - beating a few other carriers by a month.

Frontier and Hawaiian both went online in December, 1996

http://hostagencyreviews.com/15-airline ... irca-1999/

Alaska was the first to sell tickets online. Check out that retro homepage!

https://www.facebook.com/alaskaairlines ... 5299632486

bob75013 wrote:

It appears that Lufthansa was first - November, 1996 - beating a few other carriers by a month.

Frontier and Hawaiian both went online in December, 1996

http://hostagencyreviews.com/15-airline ... irca-1999/

Well I looked at that again, and it appears these are early screenshots of airline home pages, but not necessarily screenshots of their first website home pages.

TWA was early selling tickets online, though they were still mailed to you.

bob75013 wrote:

It appears that Lufthansa was first - November, 1996 - beating a few other carriers by a month.

Frontier and Hawaiian both went online in December, 1996

http://hostagencyreviews.com/15-airline ... irca-1999/

It seems SAS and Finnair also launched their first websites in november 1996.

bob75013 wrote:

It appears that Lufthansa was first - November, 1996 - beating a few other carriers by a month.

As far as I can see the oldest airline has an older website than LH as well; KL went live 8 november and LH 9 november.

Jetty wrote:

bob75013 wrote:

It appears that Lufthansa was first - November, 1996 - beating a few other carriers by a month.

As far as I can see the oldest airline has an older website than LH as well; KL went live 8 november and LH 9 november.

ANA‘s first snapshot in the Internet Archive was even taken 28 October: https://web.archive.org/web/19961028045732/http://www.ana.co.jp:80/

Canadian Airlines has the first website. Back in 1994.

With the development of the ReserVec in 1953, TCA (now Air Canada) became the first airline in the world to use a computer reservation system with remote terminals.

Although not the first, I remember Delta’s original web address as being www.delta-air.com. I believe they bought their current delta.com address from Delta faucets, but I could be wrong.

I'm sure remember seeing an article in a magazine regarding Canadi>n Airlines being the first major airline to have a website in I believe 1994. I had a quick look around for the article no luck, but I'll keep looking.

BC77008 wrote:

Although not the first, I remember Delta’s original web address as being http://www.delta-air.com. I believe they bought their current delta.com address from Delta faucets, but I could be wrong.

I remember this as well.

Noise wrote:

Canadian Airlines has the first website. Back in 1994.

Actually, archive.com shows it's first entry for Canadian Airlines on December 21, 1996. The first entry that shows up looking like a webpage datest o Feb 24, 1997

I can only imagine being that first person to say "hey, buying something expensive over this new internet thing seems like a good idea. I hope my dialup doesn't get disconnected half way though and I get billed multiple times"

Actually me bad! my reference was for their reservation system.

As for an airline website, Canadian Airline (http://www.cdnair.ca) was the first according to this

Canadian Airlines has the distinction of being the first airline in the world to have a website on the Internet (http://www.cdnair.ca). The website was launched in April 1994 and is recognized in the Canadian Internet handbook[5] 1994 and 1995 editions. It was given recognition for not only being the first airline website in the world but also the first with transactional capabilities such as flight arrival/departure and fare information. At the time, this fact was widely reported by Canadian media including CBC Venture and Maclean's Magazine. The website was created and credited to Grant Fengstad who at the time was leading a strategy to demonstrate that the Internet was going to revolutionize the travel sector./ Wiki


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Airlines ..... under internet presence

YULACYYZ wrote:

With the development of the ReserVec in 1953, TCA (now Air Canada) became the first airline in the world to use a computer reservation system with remote terminals.

Actually that was 1963, but AC were a pioneer nonetheless.

bob75013 wrote:

Noise wrote:

Canadian Airlines has the first website. Back in 1994.

Actually, archive.com shows it's first entry for Canadian Airlines on December 21, 1996. The first entry that shows up looking like a webpage datest o Feb 24, 1997

Keep in mind the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive’s oldest content is from 1996. The fall of 1995 was the first time I ever used the Internet and being an avgeek, I distinctly remember cdnair.ca being one of the first aviation websites I visited. Air Canada was also an early website adopter and started phasing in e-ticketing in ‘95.

Dominion301 wrote:

YULACYYZ wrote:

With the development of the ReserVec in 1953, TCA (now Air Canada) became the first airline in the world to use a computer reservation system with remote terminals.

Actually, that was 1963, but AC were a pioneer nonetheless.


ReserVec was completed on January 24/1963 (fully operational) with the addition of a second system called Pioneer. Unlike Sabre, ReserVec wasn't able to store passengers information as it needed a manual entry.

Many had websites for internal use pre-1996. Most tested the water with airline owned travel agents. There were others even earlier using Videotex, including again a few travel agents for corporate bookings and value transactions.

I'll say it again since no one seems to be listening Alaska!

https://www.facebook.com/alaskaairlines ... 5299632486

On the flip side, what airlines still publish paper timetables? AFAIK, no U.S. carrier does.

Planesmart wrote:

Many had websites for internal use pre-1996. Most tested the water with airline owned travel agents. There were others even earlier using Videotex, including again a few travel agents for corporate bookings and value transactions.

Exactly! There had been an online world BEFORE the triumph of the internet. I did my first online shoppings around 1990 via the defunct CompuServe without beeing a pioneer at all. Through channels like BTX and the beforementioned ones direct online booking from home started in the 1980-ies.

upstatedave wrote:

I'll say it again since no one seems to be listening Alaska!

https://www.facebook.com/alaskaairlines ... 5299632486

Alaska Airline was the first US airline to sell tickets online after Dec 27/1995, following the creation of their homemade website, as per the archives of the airline.

Cheers!

Honorable mention goes to... PanAM!

https://web.archive.org/web/19980627112006/http://www.panam.org:80/

The link goes to an archive from 1998, but the domain was created in 1995. Not bad for an airline that was (barely) outlasted by the Soviet Union.

smokeybandit wrote:

I can only imagine being that first person to say "hey, buying something expensive over this new internet thing seems like a good idea. I hope my dialup doesn't get disconnected half way though and I get billed multiple times"

Most full service carriers were reluctant to adopt online sales because they felt it took away from the full service experience. LCC's adopted it fairly quick because it fit really well with their operating model. Oh the irony

Kilopond wrote:

Planesmart wrote:

Many had websites for internal use pre-1996. Most tested the water with airline owned travel agents. There were others even earlier using Videotex, including again a few travel agents for corporate bookings and value transactions.

Exactly! There had been an online world BEFORE the triumph of the internet. I did my first online shoppings around 1990 via the defunct CompuServe without beeing a pioneer at all. Through channels like BTX and the beforementioned ones direct online booking from home started in the 1980-ies.

We must distinguish between "online" and "website". Before the Internet, or what we know know as the Internet, there were many private online service providers that were accessed via dialup. While many companies had an online presence that way, it was really only around 1994 with Mosaic that having a web page started to become a thing. This evolved quickly and by 1996 everyone had a webpage.

I was going to suggest one of the loco's with their giant billboard URL's painted on their fleet. EasyJet sprang to mind until I remembered they only had a huge phone number down the sides of their 737's in the early mid 90's era. Which begs the question, who had the first URL plastered across their aircraft ?

When did e-tickets really start becoming a thing globally? I remember that in parts of Asia, even up to the early 2000s, it was far more common to be issued paper tickets?

I do remember checking out Lan Chile's page (way before they became Latam) and I remember it as crude, of course, but fun. IIRC about all you could do was check schedules, I don't think you could check if a flight was on time or anything else.

globetrotter94 wrote:

When did e-tickets really start becoming a thing globally? I remember that in parts of Asia, even up to the early 2000s, it was far more common to be issued paper tickets?

from the travel agency side, by 1997 our agency was issuing about 25 percent electronic tickets.. by 2004 80 per cent and then 2008 there were no paper ticket issued thru agencies

EvanWSFO wrote:

On the flip side, what airlines still publish paper timetables? AFAIK, no U.S. carrier does.

DL posts a printed timetable on its website:

https://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta ... edules.pdf

That's as close as I can think of as far as paper timetables go.

For that matter, how many airports still put out flight guide timetables? PHL used to do this back in the day...

Man, its so crazy how far we've come in the last decade. The worldwide web is the most insane thing to hit this planet since the dinosaurs got wiped out.

LOWS wrote:

You could put some of the big names into Archive.org and see what pops up.

Someone ages ago put a link to the old British Airways website. Going to that was a shock! Everything we expect now, responsive design, accessible features, etc. None of that.

ctrabs0114 wrote:

DL posts a printed timetable on its website:

https://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta ... edules.pdf

What???? Is my browser wrong, or is that really a 1051 page PDF file!? In my organisation we've all but banned the PDF file for anything online. You must provide a HTML version. Anything like that would be done in some sort of searchable format so you can filter to just what you need. I'm gobsmacked to see that kind of file in this day and age. Wow.

Edit: Lufthansa: https://web.archive.org/web/19961109203 ... sa.com:80/

Not so cheesy, but that scrolling marquee/ticker is something you wouldn't do these days.

Edit 2: Woah, Air France / Air Inter Europe: https://web.archive.org/web/19970228031 ... france.fr/

That's bad.

I believe that this must be Air France on their Minitel system.

BestWestern wrote:

I believe that this must be Air France on their Minitel system.

I hadn't even heard of it, did a Google search and found this:

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-186203 ... e-wide-web

The SNCF system on there.

cpd wrote:

What???? Is my browser wrong, or is that really a 1051 page PDF file!? In my organisation we've all but banned the PDF file for anything online. You must provide a HTML version. Anything like that would be done in some sort of searchable format so you can filter to just what you need. I'm gobsmacked to see that kind of file in this day and age. Wow.

Yes, that's a 1,051 page PDF file. I'm pretty sure there's a searchable HTML version of DL's schedule finder, but you can search a PDF file using the CTRL-F (Find) feature on your PC (or whatever the Apple equivalent is for a Mac).

cpd wrote:

LOWS wrote:

You could put some of the big names into Archive.org and see what pops up.

Someone ages ago put a link to the old British Airways website. Going to that was a shock! Everything we expect now, responsive design, accessible features, etc. None of that.

What I found horrifying in more recent times was that the new UA website was until recently the 2004 CO website.

UA 2012:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120322185758/http://www.united.com/web/en-US/default.aspx
CO 2004:
https://web.archive.org/web/20041218033043/http://www.continental.com/

It still seems like a lot of the old quirks are still there, eg.:
Checking a flight's status, you have to put click the name of the airport when it pops up and not just put the code in, which frustrates to no end.

airbazar wrote:

Most full service carriers were reluctant to adopt online sales because they felt it took away from the full service experience. LCC's adopted it fairly quick because it fit really well with their operating model. Oh the irony

Ooh, not quite! Sir Stelios at Easyjet is famed for having said "the internet is for nerds and will never make money for my business" in response to a suggestion that the concept be tried out. Eventually another senior manager approved a trial whereby a website was created but simply directed customers to book via telephone. The number the website gave was different to the usual ones and after a very short time of watching the volume of calls it received a proper web-sales portal was commissioned :p

cpd wrote:

ctrabs0114 wrote:

DL posts a printed timetable on its website:

What???? Is my browser wrong, or is that really a 1051 page PDF file!? In my organisation we've all but banned the PDF file for anything online. You must provide a HTML version. Anything like that would be done in some sort of searchable format so you can filter to just what you need.

QF do also - https://www.qantas.com/flightinfo/qf_pdfTimetable.pdf
Some combination though of smaller network and more-compact layout means though it's only 49 pages :p
I notice also that it's dated for today but seems to have escaped the new logo (in fact it seems to have been created to the pre-2007 design standards and then had the 2007 logo slapped over the top - either way, long may it remain so! haha)

Bear in mind that PDFs are searchable and indeed both the DL and QF ones posted are bookmarked and indexed - obviously you can't filter them but they remain one of the most reliable and standardised ways to fuse fixed print-suitable layout and design with digital conveniences. It's all those old low-res scans merged into PDFs as little-more than multi-page images that give the format a bad name.

I think LH was the first airline to launch a website. But Alaskan was the first to start selling tickets online.

cpd wrote:

BestWestern wrote:

I believe that this must be Air France on their Minitel system.

I hadn't even heard of it, did a Google search and found this:

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-186203 ... e-wide-web

The SNCF system on there.

The French version of BBC Videotex. Both offered dial-up access, bookings and value transactions, albeit with very low levels of security in comparison to today.

The Air Canada Timetable effective Apr 5 is also available in .PDF

https://services.aircanada.com/portal/r ... 75DFD72085

XAM2175 wrote:

QF do also - https://www.qantas.com/flightinfo/qf_pdfTimetable.pdf
Some combination though of smaller network and more-compact layout means though it's only 49 pages :p
I notice also that it's dated for today but seems to have escaped the new logo (in fact it seems to have been created to the pre-2007 design standards and then had the 2007 logo slapped over the top - either way, long may it remain so! haha)

Bear in mind that PDFs are searchable and indeed both the DL and QF ones posted are bookmarked and indexed - obviously you can't filter them but they remain one of the most reliable and standardised ways to fuse fixed print-suitable layout and design with digital conveniences. It's all those old low-res scans merged into PDFs as little-more than multi-page images that give the format a bad name.

We've just banned them completely unless there is some need to have a specific design layout and even then we question it. Everything is responsive websites under a single design framework (which is strictly enforced). It needed to happen, because we used to have a wild west of PDFs and all manner of "interesting" web site designs.

NameOmitted wrote:

Honorable mention goes to... PanAM!

https://web.archive.org/web/19980627112006/http://www.panam.org:80/

The link goes to an archive from 1998, but the domain was created in 1995. Not bad for an airline that was (barely) outlasted by the Soviet Union.

Another one worth mentioning is TWA, in the early 1980s you could buy tickets online via compuserve travelshopper subscription, that was an online front end to the TWA PARS system where the public could (I think for the first time) bypass travel agents and book tickets online with almost any airline in the world.

I also remember text based websites that I used to use lynx to book online, before the graphical websites we see today many organizations had text based sites that served the public, these looked more like dial up bulliten boards. A text based site using lynx was far faster than a graphical website using Netscape.

https://web.archive.org/web/19971212061 ... ir.com:80/

Here's Delta's website in 1997.

Here are some airline websites from the 1990s:
http://hostagencyreviews.com/15-airline ... irca-1999/

Inn the good ole U.S of A Delta beat everyone to the punch, we all know that!

ctrabs0114 wrote:

EvanWSFO wrote:

On the flip side, what airlines still publish paper timetables? AFAIK, no U.S. carrier does.

DL posts a printed timetable on its website:

https://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta ... edules.pdf

That's as close as I can think of as far as paper timetables go.

For that matter, how many airports still put out flight guide timetables? PHL used to do this back in the day...

Thanks. I was actually referring to the types you could pickup off a check-in counter or gate counter. I haven't seen one in years. BNA used to print theirs every quarter, but that too has gone by the wayside.

Just a point of clarification, Website infers being on the World Wide Web, which exists on teh Internet, but the Internet itself is more than just www. Many airlines had presences that were not websites, often on online services such as Prodigy, Compuserve or AOL. Are we asking what was the first airline to connect online, or the first one to buy into the whole WWW world?