<p>I travel by air a lot these days. My wife is American so naturally, I travel between the UK and USA by air at least once or twice a year. And now have friends and family from the USA come to visit me in the UK. With that in mind, I needed an application that tracked flights that I and friends were taking from different airports around the world.</p>
<p>I tend to go to the following airports:</p>
<ul>
<li>Heathrow - LHR</li>
<li>New York - JFK</li>
<li>Nashville - BNA</li>
<li>Atlanta - ATL</li>
</ul>
<p>Sure, there are dedicated applications for individual airports (or in some cases, they don't) but I don’t want to switch between applications. I want to use <em>one</em> application that handles <em>everything</em> that comes to flights.</p>
<p>That’s where <a href="https://flighty.com/">Flighty</a> comes in.</p>
<p>In this post, I want to explain why Flighty is an excellent product.</p>
<h2>The product market fit for Flighty</h2>
<p>Let’s take a look at the <a href="https://leanproductplaybook.com/book/">product market fit</a> for Flighty.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Target customer -</strong> frequent fliers</li>
<li><strong>Undeserved Needs -</strong> important flight information (preflight, while you’re at the airport, after you’ve landed), social media stickers, lifetime flight statistics, notifying friends and family when you have a flight.</li>
<li><strong>Value Proposition-</strong> important flight information</li>
</ul>
<p>Now that we understand how the Flighty product fits with it’s target market, let’s look at what makes it a good product.</p>
<h2>The design; getting flights added takes centre stage.</h2>
<p>Flighty shows you the most important information to you when you open the application; your upcoming or active flights. If you don’t have a flight, you can search for one by using the airline and flight number.</p>
<p>This is a major reason why Flighty is a good product. It is centred on getting flights added quickly and easily, and tracking them is shown when you open the application. Flighty prioritises your time and makes it a stress free experience when you use it.</p>
<p>The icons to highlight which gate or baggage belt you need to go to grabs your attention so you can clearly see important information at a glance is very useful if you’re going around an airport.</p>
<h2>Where’s my plane?</h2>
<p>I think wondering <em>'Where's my plane?'</em> might be one of the most asked questions when it comes to air travel. Flighty helps to answer this question.</p>
<p>Flighty tracks your plane 25 hours before your flight, so it can predict a new departure time. Flighty also shows you notifications from Air Traffic Control, which is great at understanding why your flight has been delayed for reasons like weather.</p>
<p>Speaking of the weather, the map also shows real time weather around the world. I find this quite useful if I want to check if I’m going to experience any turbulence during my flight.</p>
<p>I’m a fan of data for this sort of stuff, and being able to see my plane on a map and info about the plane itself is fascinating to me. It’s also handy when tracking a friend’s flight I can see exactly where their plane is.</p>
<h2>Live activities</h2>
<p>I’ve rarely used an application that’s used live activities, let alone a live activity that I found useful. But the live activity from Flighty is an exception. Just being able to check what gate I need to get to or the status of a friend’s flight from the Lock Screen is extremely efficient and a time saver (plus, my iPhone XS doesn’t have the best battery life these days, so the less time I spend looking at my phone, the better).</p>
<p>Whether I’m in a taxi going to the airport, or at the airport itself, it’s so useful just to quickly check my phone and get the information I need. Plus, in my case, it saves the battery life on my iPhone XS.</p>
<h2>Friends and sharing</h2>
<p>How many times have you had to share flight information with friends and family? Too many?</p>
<p>With Flighty, it handles that for you. Flighty Friends lets you sync flight information instantly, so your friends and family can monitor your trip. Plus, it sends notifications to you if a friend has landed or taken off.</p>
<p>Or if they don’t use Flighty, you can share a web link to your flight or copy text to your clipboard. I use this so much when I'm telling my parents details about the flight I'm on as they don't use Flighty (as they don't fly that much).</p>
<p>This problem might look like a minor inconvenience, but if you’re someone who flies frequently and needs to update multiple family members, Flighty takes care of that for you and gives you one less thing to worry about.</p>
<p>Plus, there are some fun stickers you can use in instagram (or others). From a flight map, a Flighty boarding pass, flight status and even a Flighty Passport. The graphics for this are well done and look great when creating stories on social media.</p>
<h2>Data, data and more data</h2>
<p>I’m not sure if I’m alone out there, but I do appreciate the flight stats that Flighty keeps track of. From total miles flown, number of flights, time lost to delay and most flown aircraft, I appreciate the data available and the graphics for the most flown aircraft and the flighty passport make it more appealing to view.</p>
<h2>It works across iOS, Apple Watch and Mac</h2>
<p>It’s great that this application just works across multiple Apple Devices, and the experience is consistent.</p>
<p>But it being exclusive to Apple devices is a slight downside. My parents use Android phones and it's a shame they can't receieve a push notification if I've landed or taken off and need to rely on checking it manually themselves.</p>
<h2>The pricing plans</h2>
<p>The free version does miss out on a lot of features, and I do subscribe to the pay as you go option when I do need to use it as it provides the most flexibility (at $3.99 a week). There is a one time payment option at $249, as well as $47.99 annual option.</p>
<p>I have praised Flighty a lot in this post, but if you don’t fly often, or track friends flights then this application might not be for you. It is expensive and to get the most out of it, you need to subscribe as it includes push notifications, live activities, weather radar and more.</p>
<p>However, if you are someone who values data, a high quality application and flies frequently (and has an iOS device), then Flighty might be the product you are looking for when it comes to monitoring flights.</p>


Saving me time at airports around the world.

Joshua Blewitt

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