TAP Portugal airline web site fails to sell airline tickets

I just went to buy a ticket from flytap.com.

The experience starts with pictures violently whizzing across the top of the screen.  This is just an annoyance, but movement on the screen distracts from whatever one is trying to do. I already know it's going to be an unpleasant experience.

I select the route and date.  The date selection doesn't go away.  Ah, I guess it's because return, not one-way, is selected, and so it's expecting another date.  So I select one-way.  The form forgets everything, including departure and destination locations.  I have to start again.  There is no reason for this to happen.  But it's still just an annoyance.

As I'm re-entering the data, I decide it I want it in English instead of Portuguese, so I select this using the widget at the top.  Again, the form forgets everything, and I have to start again.  But again, just an annoyance.  Bad incompetence, but just an annoyance.

As things proceed, I am invited to log in.  I have an account, and I have my email and password for this account stored.  I enter them.  The login fails.  It says something vague like the login couldn't work at this time, please try again later.  It's unclear whether they think the password is wrong, or whether they have some kind of transitory system issue.  This is two major issues: logins aren't working, and they're not saying why.

On the chance that a password reset will help, I select this option.  It opens a new tab with the string "javascript;" in the address bar, and nothing happens.  This is on firefox.  A second major issue.

I go ahead and try to buy the ticket as a guest, without an account.  I have to enter passenger information.  The forms are all tedious, they clearly aren't using normal dropdown lists.  I can't jump in a list by hitting the first letter, like I can in a normal list.  To enter my mobile number, I can't just start with +41.  I have to select "Switzerland" from a drop-down list, and hitting "S" doesn't help.  I have to scroll down a long list, and it takes a long time.  I eventually get past these bad and annoying forms with bad fake dropdowns.

Eventually, we're on a payment page, and I enter the details from one of my shitfrastructure payment cards.  I have to choose the cardholder country, but the dropdown here is even more broken than the other dropdowns.  Clicking on it doesn't do anything.  Clicking on it again does nothing.  Then clicking on it does do something: it brings up an alphabetical list of countries from Afghanistan to Belarus.  But there's no scrollbar in this list.  It seems to be a truncated list, with only that short list of countries available.  I try down-arrow, and it really does end with Belarus.  I try opening the list again (it's three clicks each time to do this; I dread to think why) and try page-down, but Belarus really is the end of the list.

I'm left wondering how to work around TAP's broken web site, so that I can buy a ticket from them.  They are supposedly in the business of selling airline tickets.  I could try a different airline, but there would be more connections.  I could try a different browser.  I guess I'd try chromium next.  By luck, I do have a payment card with the cardholder address at a country in the short-list of countries TAP are deigning to offer, but it wasn't the card I was planning to use.  I guess I could try that card.  Their web site would probably fail in another way, but I have to try something.

This is normal quality for a web site "selling" things.  It's not an exaggeration to say that to a first approximation, nobody's web site works.  When it was 1999, and the web was a new and other option, it didn't matter how glitchy it all was.  If it worked, then great, otherwise just use the normal way.  Now the web is the only way, and it doesn't work.  The average quality is much, much lower than it was in 1999, the probability of being able to complete the task one set out to do is much, much lower, and yet, it's the only way.

It doesn't take a usability consultant to identify the three annoyances, three major issues, and one critical issue that cropped up during this purchase attempt.  One single try-out by a normal customer brought all of these to light.  Not only is TAP's web department incompetent. Not a single senior manager with basic observation facilities can have tried this out as a customer.

Do people just get stuck in places because they are unable to book travel out, because no one's web site works?