Flighty Airports(flighty.com) |
Flighty Airports(flighty.com) |
I think you probably know that though.
Everything from on design, to features, to data integrations. It's everything that vibe coding and agents don't get you. I appreciate their craft.
I travel a lot, and frequently encounter flight delays. It’s mind boggling difficult to find out where my plane is when it’s delayed via Flighty. This and a few other things, FlightAware gets right.
I feel like Flighty is for rare leisure traveler and FlightAware is for weekly business and/or pilot traveler.
I’ve honestly had better luck with iOS built in flight tracker than Flighty itself.
I used it in free mode when I was on iOS, but it would be ~£10 per trip for something that would improve my life less than a coffee at the airport.
In my opinion they need to aggressively cut costly features (like weather data), and if they have different international data feeds, perhaps do region locked pricing. I don't fly to the US much, so let me buy a Europe and Asia subscription and skip the US costs. Or vice-versa. It would have needed to be ~£10 a year at most.
If a flight is delayed even 1 minute, it’s highlighted as red text. This throws me off every time.
Google does not this. It still shows as green if it’s just a few minutes delayed.
I’ve reported this to the Flighty team and they ignored me so I can only assume they think this is a good idea, and I will therefore never pay for their app.
Needless to say there were no objective reasons for that - airport dashboard was showing proper time and flight departed with 30min delay (displayed by Flighty as 1.5hr delay).
I've asked and they say there's little they can do, the airlines systems are broadcasting this data and some airlines are better at it than others.
They’ve hurt their brand here really, which is a high quality native app experience that makes sense of a lot of granular data from different sources.
Read the other comments and you'll see the same, download the iOS app and use that as your basis for commenting.
It's hard to believe airline broadcasted incorrect data in my case. Even if that was the case, they could have cross checked it with airport data, which is way easier to obtain compared to airline stream.
And also they could have additional checks for cases when aicraft "changes" departure time to 1 hr before scheduled at around 2 hours before scheduled time. It should be highly unusual case.
I especially love that it usually tells me or warns me about a delay before I leave the lounge, so i get to spend some more time relaxing. That and of course the amazing data in your flighty passport!
It’s a nice app and service, but I wouldn’t trust all those reviews that are like “I knew before the aircraft pilot knew”. It has its own limitations.
For example... if there's a delay and so because you found out sooner you can stay home an extra hour instead of sitting at the airport I would pay $10 for that.
I've had once cancellation in my life so I see why the need hasn't presented itself very loudly.
I'm almost certainly going to be waiting at the airport anyway by the time the delay is confirmed.
Flighty gets heavy use from US airline employees. We're frequently in the airport with a brief break before flying the next flight. Usually, this next flight will be on an aircraft that hasn't arrive to the airport yet. Most of us will find a quiet place to relax for awhile and it's really irritating to pack stuff back up and walk to the gate just to find out there's no plane.
Another scenario is you arrive to an airport and need to switch aircraft. The "turn" time might be scheduled for 45 min. It's really nice to know as you walk off the aircraft that "Hey, it's actually delayed. Now I have 2 hours." I'll go grab a bite to eat or catch up with family back home etc.
My particular airline will show you what the next inbound aircraft is and it's flight number and ETA but it's a "fetch" experience. You open the app, wait for a refresh, click like 4 times to navigate to the right page, get the tactical information. Flighty keeps it on the lock screen. Just lift your phone and it's there.
We're constantly asking our employer to emulate Flighty. Tech isn't their strong suit though.
It also has links to a lot of other information useful for people in the airline industry.
I find the Airport Arrival Demand Chart to be good for seeing a big picture of all the flights: https://www.fly.faa.gov/aadc/
The links on the NAS page are also really good. nice share!
I was hoping this might have information about length of security lines, a bit like Google maps indicating delays due to traffic build up, but this doesn't seem to be there. That would have been useful/actionable - give an idea how far ahead to arrive at airport to make it through security.
Flighty has 99% of the time notified me about issues before airlines have. In a couple situations it’s been more than 6 hours ahead of airline communication and I can personally speak to the amount of shows myself and my artists have been able to make because of an early notification about a delay or cancellation giving us enough time to reroute before everyone else rebooks.
Also the flighty passport has some amazing data and stats we all love to share with each other every year.
The new update just looks to add another tool to the flighty tool belt to keep me appraised of how likely I am to make it to my next show. Jury is still out on how good the data is though!
I have had at least 2-3 situations where Flighty gave me information before the airport did, and that I ended up being a guy informing a few fellow passengers on the status of our flight before the airlines did.
They've chosen a niche, have executed extremely well, and I'm happy to throw $50/year at them to say thank you for an excellent product that does everything I want.
My ONLY complaint is that during a flight, flighty's live activity or something uses up a TON of battery. It seems unlike them to overlook such a thing when the rest of the app has such a polish and attention to detail (form and function-wise)
Traffic on google maps might actually be a good canary for airport issues.
There are many cities in the world with more than a single airport at relatively close distance. Just to name the few I've been to recently: New York City, London, Paris, Dubai.
I think it's useful information if it turns out one of these choices has significantly higher cancellation rates.
One small thought: as I scroll down on a particular airport page, it would be useful for that page to always display the airport's name in a fixed position. I've opened up a few airports and scrolled down to look at the data, and then was unable to tell which page was which airport without scrolling the pages back to the top (I later realized I could just look at the URL, which is cool).
It’s one of those slick apps designed to superficially look nice without actually being well-thought-out. That’s not what design is or should mean; that’s just aesthetics.
Case in point: one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration, is displayed in the tiniest type size on the flight info display pane, in light grey text on a slightly darker grey background. It’s bordering on illegible.
It also doesn’t surface boarding time (or countdown to same), which is the single most important piece of data a flight tracker can give you.
Flighty is all about getting you to the airport in time for your flight, so the most important pieces of information are things like departure times, connection times, delay information, terminal and boarding gate. These are prioritised in the interface.
The flight duration is set when you book the flight and it's not going to change, there is no reason to prioritise this.
> It also doesn’t surface boarding time
I think this would be useful but difficult data to get. Airlines sometimes will push boarding announcements to their own apps but I doubt they would agree to feed Flighty.
What is your use case for Flighty, and why would this information be important at all?
I'm going to start using this as an interview question for people to solve.
Edit: actually it's even weirder. Here's the zoom levels I see, from zoomed out, to zoomed in:
- BNE, MEL
- BNE, SYD, MEL
- BNE, CBR, MEL (??)
- BNE, SYD, CBR, MEL
Yet, this thread is full of people defending this pre-alpha quality thing.
Surely that’s wrong?
Anybody have a good solution that's utilizing actual traveler data vs the (non existent atm) TSA data?
This request has no basis in reality.
Since the TSA doesn't seem to be releasing this data though, apple or google could spy on GPS and motion data for individuals to estimate when people entire the line and pass through security, and derive a better-than-nothing estimate. It does seem like the government refusing to do something, and apple/google stepping in and doing a government-like thing is a norm, so even though I'm joking I wouldn't even be that surprised.
What else necessary info that’s missing?
Going back to a map view from an airport view resets the map, so exploration for fun is again borderline unusable.
Given the prominent TV Mode button in the interface, this update seems to be about competing with Flightradar24, who sell business subscriptions for airports and related sectors for information displays.
The dashboard is really nice and if it remained free I could see integrating it into a display's playlist in my office but, I highly doubt this doesn't turn into a hefty subscription service.
Individual airports also may have wait times on their website, but results can vary.
At the default for me it showed SFO and SAN, both green, and did not show LAX. LAX is a bigger and busier airport than SFO and SAN.
I'm not saying they were wrong not to show it. Just curious - It was apparently a common interview question - what place names should you show a map at a certain zoom level.
Honestly I often know changes from Flighty for my flights before the airlines do or at least before they notify me. I had once my carrier said on time and Flighty said 90 mins delay. I went to the airport on time and turns out flight was delayed. Should have just trusted them!
The main reason I also am not president of the world already is because I wouldn't like the attention.
The gp asked a reasonable question. Your admonition about making money is misplaced because your assumption about it being a hobby is incorrect.
The website was developed by Flighty LLC. To answer the gp's question: Although the website itself doesn't have direct monetization, it acts as "inbound marketing" for the paid iOS app. Clicking on "Download Flighty" takes the user to the Apple App Store:
In-App Purchases
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $4.99
Annual Savings Flighty Pro $59.99
Month-to-Month Flighty Pro $9.99
Annual Savings (Family Plan) $119.00
Lifetime Flighty Pro $299.00
Flexible Monthly (Family Plan) $15.99
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $4.99
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $7.99
Pro Family Lifetime $449.00
Annual Savings Flighty Pro $59.99
It's not just a $5/month VPS. Some cursory googling says Flighty gets data from the FlightAware Firehose api which costs a lot of money. The cost would exceed the financial resources of most people to make an equivalent free hobby website. (https://www.flightaware.com/commercial/firehose/documentatio...)
I'd say that's exactly the focus for Flighty to have that.
Airports and airlines may have information that they deliberately do not share with passengers.
For example: a large European airport that I once did some work for ran a trial in which they announced departure boarding gates significantly earlier. The effect was that passengers went to their gates earlier.
The side effect was that retail revenues in the terminal fell during the trial. Yes, this was a metric.
Guess what? They decided not to proceed with announcing departure gates earlier and went back to the previous system.
Well, some of them directly from TSA?
It’s not just about money. It’s complexity, company size, management, etc.. Loss of focus by having to build a new app from ground up. Features and improvements take longer as they have to be done twice. Parity problems. Support debt. Maintaining multiple versions of the same app isn’t just “hire more”.
As you agreed with, they are successful. Maybe they’re happy with that.
They probably haven't done it because it doesn't make sense for them financially.
But if, say, you are traveling with a pet that has to be verified at the counter, or you need to check a bag, the time windows for accepting those are set by the scheduled departure time. If your plane is still in the air or hasn't even left its origination airport (and, for the sake of argument here, we will assume you are flying from a smaller airport that doesn't have other aircraft that can easily be reassigned to your flight, so you know it will be delayed), it doesn't matter: they still close the check-in and baggage 45 minutes (on American; YMMV by airline) before scheduled departure. So you have no choice but to get there early and wait unless your airline actually declares the flight delayed when they know it will happen.
How much does this app cost? Who knows?! Does a "Week-to-Week Flighty Pro" subscription cost $4.99 or $7.99? Why is Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $4.99 in the list twice? Same for Annual Savings Flighty Pro $59.99. Apple have made such a fucking mess of in-app purchases that we end up with this kind of rubbish, and I can't place any trust in a developer who allows their in-app purchases list to look like this. So they just lost a sale.
Honestly have just been using Flighty for 4 years
Not that many people on Android are willing to pay $60 for an app.
Those platforms don't generate revenue
Like GP, I'm also a paid subscriber and I couldn't care less where else it's available. If anything, it being a native app rather than a multiplatform JS wrapper is a plus to me.
BTW, them being iOS-only means they're probably getting lots of marketing support from Apple and other perks. That can really help a startup.
>If they printed the exact time boarding starts and people showed up then (and later), no flight would ever board on time
I don't understand the logic. If everyone is there at the stated boarding time and the airline has correctly allocated enough time for boarding, aren't they winning?
But this is why Flighty probably doesn't show it, it's irrelevant.
Most budget airlines pull this crap but I've started pushing back especially when it's poor weather outside and they expect us to wait in the rain just to improve their metrics
They need some EU261 denied boarding threats/claims to sort them out
If you're in the US!
https://dontkillmyapp.com/ is just one example of the kind of problems app developers face on Android