Glassbox Case Study: UX Turbulence Ahead: How One Airline Fixed Its Booking Flow in 24 Hours

Industry:

Aviation | Global Airline

Focus Areas:

UX Optimization Journey Mapping Friction Detection

The Problem Was Hiding in Plain Sight

Sophie wasn’t new to site issues. As a Digital Experience Manager at a major international airline, she was used to fielding the occasional booking bug or backend hiccup. But this time? Something felt different.

Support calls were ticking up. Analytics flagged a drop in completed bookings. And customers were abandoning the checkout flow mid-way through their trip planning.

Her team had just launched a visual update to the booking path—a cleaner layout, fewer steps, better design. Everything had tested fine. But people were still leaving. They had the data. What they didn’t have was the why.

“We were basically throwing spaghetti at the wall. Everyone had a theory, but nobody had a clear answer.”– Sophie, Senior Digital Experience Manager

Seeing the Journey from the User’s Side

That’s where Glassbox came in.

Sophie’s team turned on Session Replay and began watching real user sessions—anonymized, visual, and full of insight. What they saw was frustratingly simple: users were clicking on a non-clickable button, thinking they were progressing in the booking flow.

But nothing happened. No feedback. No error. Just... silence.

Some users tried again. Others gave up. In fact, hundreds of potential bookings were stalling at that exact same step.

A small design oversight was costing the company big. But now, they had the proof—and the fix.

Fast Fix, Major Payoff

Sophie looped in the design team. Within a day, they swapped the visual decoy for a functioning call-to-action. No meetings. No drama. Just a clear solution, backed by real user behavior.

And just like that, the numbers turned:

• ✅ +26% in completed bookings within the first month

• 📉 14% fewer booking-related support calls

• 💡 A renewed focus on cross-team collaboration between CX, Product, and Design
  

“We didn’t just fix a broken path. We reconnected the dots between behavior, frustration, and opportunity.”– Lead UX Designer, Global Airline

Why This Story Matters

This isn’t just a story about UX. It’s a story about what happens when teams stop guessing and start listening—to the digital breadcrumbs every user leaves behind.

People don’t always submit feedback forms. But they always tell you something through their behavior. Glassbox gave this team the visibility to turn a mystery into a moment of clarity—and act fast, before frustration turned into fallout.

Key Takeaways

• Behavior is feedback: Even when users don’t speak up, their clicks tell a story

• Small friction = big fallout: One overlooked UX element was costing the company millions

• Speed = success: Real-time insights meant the team made a meaningful fix in under 24 hours