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Flighty Airports

flighty.com

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Re: Flighty Airports

#61

Post by dhosek »

newscracker wrote: post #32
bombcar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it actually do? People seem to get very excited about it but my flight status is always either “on the plane” or “not on the plane”

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.

Re: Flighty Airports

#62

Post by bronco21016 »

toast0 wrote: post #41
FireBeyond wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the most notable "use", not necessarily "value", is when the airline is still prevaricating over the delay, you're approaching boarding time and you can see from ADS-B that the inbound aircraft hasn't even begun initial descent.

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 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.

Re: Flighty Airports

#63

Post by logifail »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #35
exidy wrote: post #24

While I appreciate the aesthetics of this feature I actually fear it represents a loss of focus for Flighty. As a traveller, I don't need a global view of airport disruptions, I need relevant info for my flights . 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.

They can do both things at once. Airports desperately need to be displaying accurate information and stop letting gate agents make random calls based on their interpreting of company policy

> Airports desperately need to be displaying accurate information [..]

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.

Re: Flighty Airports

#64

Post by chrony3705 »

ZeWaka wrote: post #31
exidy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration 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 r…

Boarding is hard because it's at the discretion of the airlines, yeah. Departure time is easier because of https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT

[dead]

Re: Flighty Airports

#65

Post by awill »

halapro wrote: post #57
aresant wrote: post #26

Clicked this and was hopeful it was a TSA-line-tracker Anybody have a good solution that's utilizing actual traveler data vs the (non existent atm) TSA data?

How do you expect that to work? Automatic reporting is impossible, you have to rely on individuals to arrive there, open the app and take a guess. Then by the time you see the report the line is long gone (or tripled) This request has no basis in reality.

Not sure how they're getting their data, but https://tsa.fromthetraytable.com/

Re: Flighty Airports

#67

Post by Shank »

awill wrote: post #65
halapro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you expect that to work? Automatic reporting is impossible, you have to rely on individuals to arrive there, open the app and take a guess. Then by the time you see the report the line is long gone (or tripled) This request has no basis in reality.

Not sure how they're getting their data, but https://tsa.fromthetraytable.com/

> Due to the federal funding lapse, this airport has temporarily suspended wait time reporting. Allow significantly more time at security and check with your airline for flight status.

Well, some of them directly from TSA?

Re: Flighty Airports

#68

Post by yosito »

exidy wrote: post #20
sneak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flighty is poorly designed. 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 bor…

> one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration 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 r…

In my extensive travel experience, more than half the time the boarding time listed at the gate isn't even correct.

Re: Flighty Airports

#69

Post by culopatin »

How does an app like this make money? I made an app that I simply can’t promote because it would bankrupt me. Every person I share it with thinks it’s genius and been using it but if it ever hits critical mass without me knowing it, id be those guys with the “my cloud provider reamed me overnight” posts.
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