Flighty’s Beautiful Design, Fast Push Notifications Make It One of the best Flight-Tracking Apps on the App Store

I fly very rarely — once or twice a year, tops. But even those one or two trips a year are enough to feel the tension in and around the airport. Travellers frantically trying to get to their gate, pushing through stress-mounted security at a breakneck pace, and digesting the next best thing to rubber food.

Airports suck.

Any opportunity to smooth out the experience is worthwhile.

Flighty is a brand new app designed to take at least some of the stress out of the airport. Flighty comes from the makers of Weather Line, features an incredibly simple and easy-to-use design, push notifications for staying on top of flight changes, and inbound plane-tracking to ensure you’re at your gate when you need to be.

It’s been awhile since we named App in the Air the best flight tracking app for the iPhone, and Flighty’s great design is bound to give App in the Air a run — or flight — for its money.

Design

What struck me most when I first starting testing Flighty was the app’s design. For a flight tracking app, Flighty has some serious design chops.

The app overlays a map in the upper half of the UI, showcasing either a plain map or a quick flight path of your upcoming flights.

Searching and adding a flight to your upcoming list is super simple. Add in your departure city, search for your destination, choose a date, and Flighty aggregates all the flight data out there to provide you with a list of flights to choose from.

Once scheduled, you will quickly see your upcoming flights in the My Flights view, and you can tap on any flight to see a wide variety of information about the flight. Flighty provides a whole host of flight information:

• Terminal and gate information
• “Good to know” information (like time zone changes)
  
• Weather forecasts upon arrival
• In-bound plane tracking
• Detailed timelines of the flight
  
• Aircraft and airline information
• Your history on the route
• History of flight changes for this route

All this information is provided in easy to consume content cards and all data is beautifully displayed, allowing you to quickly glance at information. Coming from the makers of Weather Line, glanceable information is right in Flighty’s wheelhouse.

Push Notifications

Of all of Flighty’s high-end features, push notifications may be at the very top of the list. The Flighty team has its own end-to-end infrastructure, capable of sending notifications faster than any other flight tracking app on the App Store — the Flighty team boasts that airport boards and airlines’ own apps can’t keep up with Flighty’s speed.

Inbound Plane-Tracking

Flighty begins tracking your flight 25 full hours before your scheduled departure — meaning it’s tracking the plane on prior flights. This ensures Flighty is on top of the current status of the airplane itself. If a prior flight is delayed or ahead of schedule, Flighty is aware of the situation and relays the data to you.

Push notifications and inbound plane-tracking essentially work hand-in-hand to get you travel information at the fastest speed possible.

A Smattering of Features

Flighty is a full-featured flight-tracking app, right from initial release.

• TripIt sync and Calendar sync
• Email import
• Personal flight stats
• Real flight paths
• Arrival forecast
• FAA OIS (direct feed to FAA communication with pilots about forced delays by the FAA — this is one of the number one reasons for flight delays across the world.)
• Connection Assistant (when you land, an alert with everything you need to make your connection)
• Check-In Assistant
• Morning-Of Assistant
• Taxi times
• Offline estimation
• Arrival weather
• Timezone change
• Baggage claim
• Real aircraft models
• Tail number detail
• Intelligent search (one entry like “AA100” is parsed automatically)
• Full timetable
• iCloud sync
• Privacy (Flighty retains zero data from TripIt, Calendar, or email automations)

Flighty Pro

A range of the above features require a Flighty Pro subscription. Now, normally flight-tracking subscriptions come with eye-popping prices — developers in this category are fully aware the main target audience are those business folks who have to travel often and would probably pay any reasonable price for a few more points of convenience.

Flighty Pro unlocks 50 different types of push notifications, TripIt and calendar sync, email forwarding, the Connection/Check-In/Morning-Of Assistants, and in-depth data such as “Where’s my Plane,” FAA OIS, arrival forecast, tail number detail, and more.

At $8.99/month and $69.99/year, Flighty is very, very reasonably priced. (Flighty’s current launch sale is $49.99/year, so if you expect to use Flighty Pro a lot, now is a great time to subscribe.) Flighty’s free tier is designed to allow everyone to store their flights, understand the app, and upgrade to Flighty Pro when they need or want to. So, if you find yourself flying often during the summer, you can grab the monthly plan for the summer months only and take advantage of all of Flighty Pro’s premium features.

Wrap Up

Flighty has an inordinate amount of expertise drilled into it. From Flighty’s marketing kit:

Over 200 pilots and pro flyers have been using Flighty for over a year, averaging 3 trips per week each. We’ve had the blessing of amazingly helpful expert users and time to let them refine the experience. It’s super cool to get feedback from the pilot that literally flew the plane, and to see feedback coming in from all parts of the work as our flyers test Flighty.

It’s almost astounding how much is packed into this first release of Flighty.

To reiterate, I don’t fly as often as many of my Sweet Setup comrades, so my needs in the flight-tracking department are far less than others. But there are a variety of reasons to use Flighty, even if you’re not a frequent flyer.

The app’s design is second to none — Flighty may have one of my favorite app designs, period. I especially love the My Flights view, tracking all your flights and providing a map of everywhere you’ve flown.

Flighty Pro is unlockable on a month-to-month basis, meaning you don’t have to shell out $70+ upfront to track one or two flights a year. Instead, at $9 for a month, I’m guaranteed to try Flighty at the end of August when we fly out for a friend’s wedding.

With the launch of Flighty, we’re going to give our review for the best flight-tracking app a fresh coat of paint. Stay tuned for the update.