You know that moment when the person comes on the loud speaker to announce to an angry mob of passengers-that their flight has been cancelled? Yeah, we want to avoid that moment. Instead, wouldn’t it be far more suitable to know that your flight’s been changed, cancelled or re routed before everyone else, allowing you to get first dibs on new flights or refunds? Believe it or not, that’s a thing, and you can join in.
Airline apps are fantastic, and they’re only getting better. Almost every major airline now offers a dynamic-interactive app which will get you through your journey. You can track bags, upgrade, check flight status and in the event of issues-you can often make necessary flight changes directly through the app, without speaking to anyone. Basically, if you don’t use them: you should.
Before you get too excited- it’s Apple only, so no Android. Grrr. With that disclaimer out there, MyFlights is an incredible app, which will let you know if your flight has been changed, delayed, cancelled or amended, well before the airline will tell you. That’s because MyFlights tracks your “Amadeus” record, which is the airline software utilized by most airlines. This is invaluable for countless reasons. Beating rebooking lines, changing onward connections and making alternate plans, to name a few…
*If you have any trouble with “MyFlights”, check CheckMyTrip by Amadeus out…*
Airlines love to sneak in a schedule change, and often they won’t immediately tell you. Since schedule changes can greatly impact future travel plans, connections and so forth, knowing immediately is huge, and can save you quite a bit of money. Amadeus is the virtually universal software used by airlines, so by tapping into your “A record” the app is able to see details and notes that the airline won’t show you. It’s crafty, and sometimes you may even find some notes about you in there, if you’ve amended the booking. Enjoy.
“We’re just waiting on the inbound aircraft”. We’ve all heard that utterly annoying phrase, only to wait endlessly as the delay number continues to rise. As usual, airlines love to keep us in the dark, giving false hope, or failing to give a remotely realistic picture of just “how delayed” a flight is. Using FlightAware, you can track the inbound flight of your flight-directly in the app. By doing so, you can see that your flight from New York to LA is not going to be just 20 minutes delayed, because the plane only just left Los Angeles. And yes, it works worldwide for almost all flights! Just track a flight, and you’ll get the option to “track inbound”.
We’re all about the apps. Apps, apps apps. That’s because apps are constantly solving travel issues, making life on the road, in the sky and on the beach seamless. These days there’s an app for just about everything-travel related, so we came up with a list of 10 apps which hit every bucket. Cheap flights, instant translations (even via photo), how to guides for all mass transit. Check it out, here.
While I think the features you point out on the MyFlights app sound great, I think this app has been abandoned. I first tried to connect it to my TripIt account, but got an authentication error. Then I tried to add a booking reference for an American flight. The app couldn’t find it. Finally I tried to go to the FAQs to see if American was supported, but the FAQ page had vanished. Suspecting something was wrong at this point, I looked at the date of last update in the App Store, which was June 20, 2016. Therefore I believe this app has been abandoned. Are there any other apps that pull Amadeus records?
Great tip and good apps.
Thanks for sharing the advice, Alastair Majury.
Thanks for the review – much appreciated.
The iOS app is due to be updated very soon to bring it inline with the Web Version, which has received much more attention recently! Apologies for the delay in the iOS updates!
What about those airlines (KLM, Garuda, etc) whose bookings can’t be found, presuming they don’t use Amadeus?