FlightView Review

zyxwv88 · 06/23/2009, 12:00 PM

To start with, I'm rather impressed with FlightView. Although it has a few minor issues, it is very useful for a free app.

I started using FlightView last week when my wife flew to Florida. I found all of her flights, had it remember them, and then I could watch and see how she was doing on her trip.

First, the bad. Flightview isn't always as up-to-date as one might like. It seems that Southwest in particular doesn't update very quickly, and some updates happen too slow to be of any use other than general information. They would be a little late for the person flying. Other airlines seem to be faster to update. Gate information isn't provided, so you still need to check the boards (or tickets). Also, sometimes it doesn't find flights that exist. If your data connection isn't good or there, it will fail to find the flight, and sometimes it just won't find a flight that is there for no good reason I could find. It seems to be a bit quirky and sometimes you'll need to search many times to find your flight. Once you've found it, you're all set.

The good. Well, really almost everything else. You can see arrival times, departure times, if the flight is delayed, and more. While the flight is in the air, a map is provided with the flight path and the current location of the plane on the flight path. If the plane needs to be diverted around a storm, the path the plane will really be taking is shown. My wife's flight to Tampa was diverted around a storm near Orlando, and the flight path was obviously going around the storm.

Another time I used to when my brother-in-law was flying to see us. I could see his flight, when he was scheduled to arrive, and even see where the plane was. It made it much easier to time picking him up so he didn't have to call for me to know the flight was there.

FlightView also comes with alerts. For each flight, you can turn on alerts which show just like any other alert on your Pre on the bottom of your screen. It will let you know if your flights are delayed rerouted, or any other status change of interest. This is especially useful if you are in a rush and may not be paying as much attention to the boards as you should. These alerts do seem to come in on time for most airlines other than Southwest and I find them very useful

Although I don't fly a lot, this application has become a "must have" for my flying. If nothing else, it's nice just to have a list of all your scheduled flights and to see the schedule. Flights can be stored and managed for many weeks in the future (as far out as your airline publishes them, it seems). In addition, you can add flights to your calendar using FlightView to save you one extra step in the process of your travel.

Overall, I score this app a 4/5. If the glitches in searching for flights were fixed and all airlines were a little faster at getting updates out, I would give it a solid 5. Because it is free, I would strongly reccomend this for anyone that flies at all. It's very easy to get hooked on it.

solarus · 09/20/2009, 07:03 PM

I would agree that this app is very sweet. On my old phone (you know the one that can't multitask

) I used FlightTrack quite a lot. Nice to know there's a flight tracking program week one of my Pre experience.

retirecom · 09/22/2009, 05:50 PM

Nice review. Nice touch to be able to add the confirmation number to the flight info.

I use gcal to send me a text and/or email reminder that includes the confirmation number 24hrs in advance of the flight to remind me to check in as I usually fly SWA, too. I didn't see an alarm feature on Flightview to allow me to set that within the app rather than still having to go to the calendar to do it. That's the only thing that comes to mind that I could add to it. Would fit nicely to add the alarm option when adding the confirmation number.

And as long as I'm suggesting features - make the alarm/alert clickable to take me to the airline's website with the confirmation number filled in.

Porsche928guy · 10/02/2009, 03:26 PM

Being at the time this was the only app of its kind in the catalog I gave it a try. And I liked it. It let me save all my flights as well as flights of my friends and my family if they were going along or taking a different route. but it was when it came time to use it I found a few flews in it. as the main reviewers stats it is not always up to date by any means regardless if you have constant service or not. and I then found it hard to navigate to some screens as I wanted to see the flights in progress on a friend. But when I try to navigate to that screen I could not seem to get the app to show it. and then other times that would be the only screen I could get it to show instead of details of the airport. It is a great concept and start to a very useful app. But over all a great start.

keith1phx · 10/11/2009, 11:40 PM

This a handy little ditty that my partner and I use so he knows when to pick me up at the airport.

thermodynamic · 10/13/2009, 01:43 AM

This app is great! Updates even quicker than the actual service desk sometimes.

Only "issue" I have with it: it doesn't have a "normal" notification. Instead it's just strangely oversized text on a black background. I thought that was weird. It being a launch app for Palm, one would have thought Palm would make sure everything is standardized.

grappler · 10/30/2009, 05:43 PM

Question: I understand why FlightView creates a Calendar profile, but why does it create a Contacts profile?