Live data from Hacker News

Flighty Airports

flighty.com

141–150 of 204 posts

Re: Flighty Airports

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen many developers who released the same app on both iOS and Android and realized that Apple platforms still provide them with 80% of revenue for 20% of users. Not that many people on Android are willing to pay $60 for an app.

Developing for Android is also a much worse developer experience than developing for iOS, because there are thousands of devices to support, and much greater stratification of operating system customizations and older versions. https://dontkillmyapp.com/ is just one example of the kind of problems app developers face on Android

Yeah, iOS would never kill an app in the background to try and save battery

Re: Flighty Airports

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created this account 14 minutes prior to this post. Forgive me if I don't trust your testimonials. Feels very astroturf

Haha i knew i was going to get this reply. Long time lurker first time poster. My instagram backs up the story @bodhihawken Honestly have just been using Flighty for 4 years

[deleted]

Re: Flighty Airports

#143
What’s up with all the complaining that this wonderful app isn’t available on non Apple platforms? Android isn’t worth it for monetization and one of the reasons Flighty is so good is that the developer picked a platform and created a native app. Idgi.

Re: Flighty Airports

#144
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The promise is that it informs you quickly about flight delays, flight cancellations and gate changes. In my limited experience, it didn’t work satisfactorily for a flight delay of a few hours. It could not provide any reliable updates. 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.

I don’t see any value in knowing before the pilot knows. I’ve mostly flown American the past few years and with their app I get updates about delays and gate changes on my phone just fine. I suppose there might be some advantage to getting the notification a bit earlier, but I doubt that they can reliably give information faster than the airline itself.

I think I figured it out - if you can figure out a cancellation before everyone else you can get to the counter and get on another flight before everyone.

I've had once cancellation in my life so I see why the need hasn't presented itself very loudly.

Re: Flighty Airports

#145
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't really see the use, but maybe there are large swaths of people who stay home until they can leave at the very last minute. I'm almost certainly going to be waiting at the airport anyway by the time the delay is confirmed.

Last year Flighty literally saved me from an overnight delay because it notified me the incoming aircraft was still on the ground at the previous airport. I was able to snag the last couple seats on a later scheduled flight which actually departed. My original flight ended up getting canceled.

Thank you! That's the use case and I see the value; I learned to compensate by never taking the "last flight out" if I could avoid it.

Re: Flighty Airports

#146
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with that information though?

As airline crew, I stay in the lounge (employee lounge, not bar lounge) when I know I'm not going anywhere on time. 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…

Sounds like you identified a business opportunity for Flighty - license the functionality or just sell app access to the entire airline, at least for employees.

Re: Flighty Airports

#147
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the Flighty app pretty often, and its $60/year.

This app brings me so much delight. Seeing the incoming plane, knowing % chance of onetime or late. 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!

I'm sure the app is wonderful. I've gotten pretty good at finding this data from other sources, though, and one huge problem is that a delay isn't a delay until the airline says it is. If you carry on every bag and have no special requirements, and you checked in online ahead of time (so you have your boarding pass), it's very useful info and I could see paying for the app.

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.

Re: Flighty Airports

#148

I'm not sure the use case for this. It seems the information provided is just number of on-time/delayed/cancelled flights, but how is the user meant to use that information? Check before booking flight and choose another airport it it has more on-time flights? I think most people are just going to fly out of the nearest/most convenient airport and hope for the best. I was hoping this might have information about leng…

> a bit like Google maps indicating delays due to traffic build up,

Traffic on google maps might actually be a good canary for airport issues.

Re: Flighty Airports

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's this related to anything?

It means it's strictly unavailable for ~80% of people out there on Windows/Linux/Android?

That’s true globally, but in the US, iPhones are 60% of the smartphone market. In the US, iPhone users are also younger, more affluent, more educated, and I suspect more likely to fly than Android users. iOS users also dominate in app spending. And from a practical standpoint, 93% of iPhone users are on the latest version of iOS within six months, compared to 20% of Android users, which is huge when it comes to development costs.

Source: https://adapty.io/blog/iphone-vs-android-users/

Re: Flighty Airports

#150
CDG shows yellow (“minor issues”), 65% of planes arrive on time, 0% cancelled. FRA shows green (“normal operations”) 59% of planes arrive on time, 4% cancelled.

Surely that’s wrong?

Post reply on HN