Flighty is a flight tracking app for iOS and Mac that’s full of features, reliable and easy to use. The company has just announced its latest upgrade, version 4.0, and it includes a crucial extra detail: in-depth delay warnings.
A couple of years ago I was lining up to board a plane and my phone pinged. Flighty told me there was going to be a delay. It was only about 10 minutes after the ping that the airline made an announcement confirming it. Flighty, in other words, has always been quick. I regularly find it assigns my gate before the airline’s app or even the display boards.
But the new feature takes things to a new level. The company says, “By utilizing aviation authority data and machine learning, the app provides delay warnings hours before the airline and the exact delay reason for your flight. Flighty 4 accomplishes this impressive feat by monitoring the two biggest causes of delays—late aircraft issues and airspace issues.”
It claims that it can predict late planes with 95% accuracy, and will do so hours before the airline. And it taps into the same “FAA and Eurocontrol data your pilot uses,” and deciphers the data into plain language.
The benefit is that while an airline may announce a 30-minute delay, that new flight time can slip again when it’s delayed by another hour. With these updates, Flighty says, it can tell you if “that’s likely to be at least a five-hour delay.”
There are plenty of other features in Flighty. I love the fact that it tracks friends’ flights, so I know when someone’s flight is delayed (or landing early so I need to hurry to the airport).
It has great details about the aircraft you’re flying, details of how many flights you’ve taken over the years and (gulp) how many hours you lost to delays.
Although the regular version of Flighty is free, some of the more advanced features, such as the new delay details, only come with Flighty Pro, which costs $48 a year. If you don’t fly that option, there’s handily a per-week price which is $4. Full details at the Flighty website.