[newscracker]

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.

[dhosek]

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.

[bombcar]

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.

[FireBeyond]

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.

[bombcar]

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.

[strange_quark]

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.

[bombcar]

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.

[toast0]

What do you do with that information though?

[bronco21016]

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.

[bombcar]

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.

[bronco21016]

Nah they’ll ruin it. I’d rather Flighty charge a couple hundred bucks and maintain a comfortable business than let my employer wreck a good thing.