Orbitz Hits Air Pocket After TakeoffOrbitz Hits Air Pocket After Takeoff

Takeoff and landing can cause anxiety for airline passengers--or online travel sites. Orbitz LLC, the joint travel site for the nation's five largest carriers, ran into some serious turbulence and a lot of bad press when it launched this week. On Monday, would-be travelers found themselves on the stand-by list when an MCI fiber-optic cable in Chicago was accidentally cut. Then thousands of late-night shoppers on the West Coast were unable to gain access after 12 a.m. CST Wednesday when Orbitz said it shut the site down to add Web fare specials for travel the following Saturday.

But Orbitz looked beyond the minor bumps to focus on the good news. In its first week, the site averaged 2,000 visitors a minute, 10,000 tickets a day, and $9 million in sales. That's four or five times the amount it had expected, a spokeswoman says. Also surprising was the high percentage of first-time Internet users who pushed up interaction with the call center to one call for every two tickets booked, and required longer sessions with customer service than the site had anticipated.