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on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Flighty Airports
trakkstar wrote 5 hours 16 min ago:
Absolute metrics like "Most Disrupted Airlines" are completely useless
if they are not normalized by the number of flights per each airline.
flemhans wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
Happy to see Kyiv doing so well! Not a single delayed flight.
bl4kers wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
No description or about page or anything? Seems pretty bare bones.
socalgal2 wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
Curious what the criteria are for which airports to show at a given
zoom level.
At the default for me it showed SFO and SAN, both green, and did not
show LAX. LAX is a bigger and busier airport than SFO and SAN.
I'm not saying they were wrong not to show it. Just curious - It was
apparently a common interview question - what place names should you
show a map at a certain zoom level.
sklargh wrote 1 day ago:
Also recommend nasstatus.FAA.gov
__MatrixMan__ wrote 1 day ago:
What would be super useful is an indicator of how long it takes to get
through TSA
roysting wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://babylonbee.com/news/terrorists-give-up-after-three-h...
nathancahill wrote 1 day ago:
MiseryMap:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/
HoldOnAMinute wrote 18 hours 20 min ago:
Where's Alaska and Hawaii ?
ChrisClark wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Any way to see other airports? I never travel to the US
degenerate wrote 1 day ago:
Misery Map adds two crucial pieces of context: the delays between
airports, and rain/snow on the map, which often is the reason for
delays. It's nice to see it all together.
ViktorRay wrote 1 day ago:
Pretty interesting link as well. Thanks for sharing
codingjoe wrote 1 day ago:
Does it show ICEy conditions too?
elAhmo wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is nearly useless when using low-cost carriers, such as
RyanAir, WizzAir, etc, which seem to be predominantly covering
destinations I use.
JDEW wrote 1 day ago:
CDG shows yellow (âminor issuesâ), 65% of planes arrive on time, 0%
cancelled. FRA shows green (ânormal operationsâ) 59% of planes
arrive on time, 4% cancelled.
Surely thatâs wrong?
oompydoompy74 wrote 1 day ago:
Whatâs up with all the complaining that this wonderful app isnât
available on non Apple platforms? Android isnât worth it for
monetization and one of the reasons Flighty is so good is that the
developer picked a platform and created a native app. Idgi.
dneri wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is easily my favorite iOS app. I fly 10-20 times a year, mostly
recreationally, and have come to rely on Flighty for travel updates,
tracking my partners flights, and general stats through their Passport
feature. Beautifully designed, and it just seems like theyâve really
thought through every feature. Itâs the gold standard for apps.
HarHarVeryFunny wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not sure the use case for this. It seems the information provided
is just number of on-time/delayed/cancelled flights, but how is the
user meant to use that information? Check before booking flight and
choose another airport it it has more on-time flights? I think most
people are just going to fly out of the nearest/most convenient airport
and hope for the best.
I was hoping this might have information about length of security
lines, a bit like Google maps indicating delays due to traffic build
up, but this doesn't seem to be there. That would have been
useful/actionable - give an idea how far ahead to arrive at airport to
make it through security.
runeks wrote 5 hours 15 min ago:
> I think most people are just going to fly out of the nearest/most
convenient airport and hope for the best.
There are many cities in the world with more than a single airport at
relatively close distance. Just to name the few I've been to
recently: New York City, London, Paris, Dubai.
I think it's useful information if it turns out one of these choices
has significantly higher cancellation rates.
bob1029 wrote 1 day ago:
> a bit like Google maps indicating delays due to traffic build up,
Traffic on google maps might actually be a good canary for airport
issues.
bodhiJhawken wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is generally built around supporting your flight experience.
Iâm a touring lighting designer, and I spend a fairly large portion
of my life in the air. Myself and most other touring crew I know
adore Flighty. We get precious few hours to sleep, and being able to
sleep in a few extra hours due to delays or spend an extra 30 minutes
in the lounge eating and showing makes the difference between a good
show and a bad show.
Flighty has 99% of the time notified me about issues before airlines
have. In a couple situations itâs been more than 6 hours ahead of
airline communication and I can personally speak to the amount of
shows myself and my artists have been able to make because of an
early notification about a delay or cancellation giving us enough
time to reroute before everyone else rebooks.
Also the flighty passport has some amazing data and stats we all love
to share with each other every year.
The new update just looks to add another tool to the flighty tool
belt to keep me appraised of how likely I am to make it to my next
show. Jury is still out on how good the data is though!
atonse wrote 1 day ago:
I travel 4-5 trips a year and I didn't hesitate for a second to pay
for Flighty, because this was one of those "man these guys deserve
to be rewarded for the amazing job they've done"
I have had at least 2-3 situations where Flighty gave me
information before the airport did, and that I ended up being a guy
informing a few fellow passengers on the status of our flight
before the airlines did.
They've chosen a niche, have executed extremely well, and I'm happy
to throw $50/year at them to say thank you for an excellent product
that does everything I want.
My ONLY complaint is that during a flight, flighty's live activity
or something uses up a TON of battery. It seems unlike them to
overlook such a thing when the rest of the app has such a polish
and attention to detail (form and function-wise)
malfist wrote 1 day ago:
You created this account 14 minutes prior to this post. Forgive me
if I don't trust your testimonials. Feels very astroturf
jakeydus wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
Iâm regular commenter with an old (er) account. Flighty is an
11/10 experience.
bzillins wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty was recommended to me by a flight attendant and I also
have been notified hours ahead of the airlines by it.
malfist wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
You logged in after a 5 year hiatus to advertise for an app?
pgwhalen wrote 5 hours 45 min ago:
As not a shill myself, who comments on a variety of stuff
regularly, I could totally see why the mention of a product
someone loves is the thing that pulls them out of lurking.
mi_lk wrote 20 hours 16 min ago:
Keep it up, I think youâre onto something. Sus
xvector wrote 1 day ago:
Take it from an older account then. Flighty has been amazing, I
can attest to every point above (except sleeping in airports, I
don't do that)
bodhiJhawken wrote 1 day ago:
Haha i knew i was going to get this reply. Long time lurker first
time poster.
My instagram backs up the story @bodhihawken
Honestly have just been using Flighty for 4 years
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
Note: the web interface exposes minimal info, the rest is hidden in a
mac-only app. Don't bother.
mi_lk wrote 1 day ago:
You only really need to know when (departure/arrival time) and where
(terminal/gate), no?
What else necessary info thatâs missing?
dewey wrote 1 day ago:
It has always been an iPhone app for many years, only now they have
exposed some information on the site (Probably for getting incoming
links), so this is more interesting if you are already an existing
user of the app.
RobotToaster wrote 1 day ago:
Was going to say this. I'm getting real tired of sites trying to
force me to download their spyware apps
cantalopes wrote 1 day ago:
I mean, still better than having to go to airports' official pages
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
A select airport view has flight data limited to some x hours,
meaning you cannot even see if a flight later in the day is still
scheduled to arrive on time without consulting those official pages
anyway. So quite objectively no, it's not even objectively worse,
it's effectively useless.
Going back to a map view from an airport view resets the map, so
exploration for fun is again borderline unusable.
globular-toast wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't this currently showing a flaw in their system? It correctly shows
LaGuardia as having issues but also shows nearby airports as having
issues due to severe arrival delays. But surely those delays are also
due to LaGuardia? Maybe that's still useful, though? I don't know.
Rarely fly.
ZeWaka wrote 1 day ago:
A lot of that was due to LGA, yes. However, that doesn't stop those
airports from being affected. Getting tons of traffic rerouted is
inevitably going to cause delays across the whole airspace. Very
useful to know.
sssilver wrote 1 day ago:
Such delightful UI.
One small thought: as I scroll down on a particular airport page, it
would be useful for that page to always display the airport's name in a
fixed position. I've opened up a few airports and scrolled down to look
at the data, and then was unable to tell which page was which airport
without scrolling the pages back to the top (I later realized I could
just look at the URL, which is cool).
nobrains wrote 1 day ago:
did u see the TV mode link? i wish more visualization sites had that.
throwaway290 wrote 1 day ago:
"Most disrupted" routes/airlines should be adjusted. Right now now it
shows total numbers so the main airline or destination of any airport
is always "most disrupted" which is a bit useless
peterchane wrote 1 day ago:
On one level I'd love for them to add in my hotel reservations so I
have my whole trip in one place. But hotels don't need real time
tracking like flights do.
peterchane wrote 1 day ago:
I wish they would add hotel reservations. Loss of focus but I want it
as much as flight tracking.
culopatin wrote 1 day ago:
How does an app like this make money? I made an app that I simply
canât promote because it would bankrupt me. Every person I share it
with thinks itâs genius and been using it but if it ever hits
critical mass without me knowing it, id be those guys with the âmy
cloud provider reamed me overnightâ posts.
wayne wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
If you search for them on LinkedIn, it's a small team of ~5 outside
of Silicon Valley (Austin, Spain, Norway). I'm sure they're doing
quite well but even if they were doing just ok it doesn't have to
make billions for everyone to do ok.
aledevv wrote 1 day ago:
The popularity and traffic it brings is a gain and a value itself.
The web specialists will be able to simply convert it into economic
value.
woadwarrior01 wrote 1 day ago:
Subscriptions on the iOS app. Per SensorTower, it's making
~$1m/month.
(HTM) [1]: https://app.sensortower.com/overview/1358823008?country=US
culopatin wrote 1 day ago:
That to me is amazing. I would not pay that much for this and I
guess I project that on the user base
barbs wrote 1 day ago:
Makes me wonder then why they can't afford a team of Android
developers to make the Android version.
aurmc wrote 1 day ago:
I'm sure they can afford that, but would that end up paying for
itself? Would that end up bringing in enough new paying users to
justify spending all that money on a team of Android engineers?
They probably haven't done it because it doesn't make sense for
them financially.
avalys wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs not that they canât afford it, itâs that Android users
arenât worth the investment.
kimos wrote 1 day ago:
Because they donât want to?
Itâs not just about money. Itâs complexity, company size,
management, etc.. Loss of focus by having to build a new app from
ground up. Features and improvements take longer as they have to
be done twice. Parity problems. Support debt. Maintaining
multiple versions of the same app isnât just âhire moreâ.
As you agreed with, they are successful. Maybe theyâre happy
with that.
ggsp wrote 1 day ago:
Have you asked people how much they'd be willing to pay?
teaearlgraycold wrote 1 day ago:
Whatâs your app? Where do the costs come from?
chinathrow wrote 1 day ago:
Why do you need a cloud provider? Can't a 5$ VPS do the job?
esseph wrote 1 day ago:
That's just a cloud with a different company's name attached.
jachee wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
Yeah, but a $5 VPS won't suddenly surprise you with a five-figure
bill.
littlecranky67 wrote 1 day ago:
Why does everything have to make money? People like to built things
as a hobby. If you stay away from expensive cloud providers and use
cheap vServers, you can host a site like that for around 5-20$/month
(depending on number of users).
culopatin wrote 1 day ago:
You donât know anything about my app though. I just couldnât
believe that many people would pay this subscription to keep it
going.
Iâm not trying to make money, I just donât need it to drain my
account
jasode wrote 1 day ago:
>Why does everything have to make money? People like to built
things as a hobby.
The gp asked a reasonable question. Your admonition about making
money is misplaced because your assumption about it being a hobby
is incorrect.
The website was developed by Flighty LLC. To answer the gp's
question: Although the website itself doesn't have direct
monetization, it acts as "inbound marketing" for the paid iOS app.
Clicking on "Download Flighty" takes the user to the Apple App
Store:
In-App Purchases
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $4.99
Annual Savings Flighty Pro $59.99
Month-to-Month Flighty Pro $9.99
Annual Savings (Family Plan) $119.00
Lifetime Flighty Pro $299.00
Flexible Monthly (Family Plan) $15.99
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $4.99
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $7.99
Pro Family Lifetime $449.00
Annual Savings Flighty Pro $59.99
The website's hyperlink url to the App Store page also has a
tracking id so the company can attribute downloads/sales back to
the webpage. This lets them see how well the "free website" is
converting to paid customers. As a vehicle to generate sales
leads, it seems to work very well. To wit... Wikipedia says the
company has been in business for 7 years and it's been upvoted to
the HN front page and we're discussing it. (The Flighty website is
an example of the old saying, "The best advertising is free
advertising.")
It's not just a $5/month VPS. Some cursory googling says Flighty
gets data from the FlightAware Firehose api which costs a lot of
money. The cost would exceed the financial resources of most
people to make an equivalent free hobby website. ( [1] )
(HTM) [1]: https://www.flightaware.com/commercial/firehose/documentat...
drcongo wrote 1 day ago:
Funnily enough, I just went to download the app, checked the
in-app purchases and saw the list you've posted here, then
promptly closed the App Store.
How much does this app cost? Who knows?! Does a "Week-to-Week
Flighty Pro" subscription cost $4.99 or $7.99? Why is
Week-to-Week Flighty Pro $4.99 in the list twice? Same
for Annual Savings Flighty Pro $59.99. Apple have made such
a fucking mess of in-app purchases that we end up with this kind
of rubbish, and I can't place any trust in a developer who allows
their in-app purchases list to look like this. So they just lost
a sale.
littlecranky67 wrote 1 day ago:
They said "an app like this" and went on to talk about their app
(which is undisclosed) which can't be monetized.
GJim wrote 1 day ago:
Some people wonder why kids climb trees.
vasco wrote 1 day ago:
All my projects are also pure genius and the only reason they are not
hyper successful is they'd be too expensive to run too.
The main reason I also am not president of the world already is
because I wouldn't like the attention.
WaxProlix wrote 1 day ago:
Ads? It's not great for users but it's decent monetization. If you
really have something good, like actually liked, you can do a
donation vs ad-supported model.
culopatin wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve ran the numbers and the APIs I have to pay for would be more
expensive. Iâve tried caching the data which works to some degree
but still a negative unless I really degrade the experience
nemothekid wrote 1 day ago:
I use the Flighty app pretty often, and its $60/year.
kimos wrote 1 day ago:
This app brings me so much delight. Seeing the incoming plane,
knowing % chance of onetime or late.
Honestly I often know changes from Flighty for my flights before
the airlines do or at least before they notify me. I had once my
carrier said on time and Flighty said 90 mins delay. I went to the
airport on time and turns out flight was delayed. Should have just
trusted them!
devilbunny wrote 1 day ago:
I'm sure the app is wonderful. I've gotten pretty good at finding
this data from other sources, though, and one huge problem is
that a delay isn't a delay until the airline says it is. If you
carry on every bag and have no special requirements, and you
checked in online ahead of time (so you have your boarding pass),
it's very useful info and I could see paying for the app.
But if, say, you are traveling with a pet that has to be verified
at the counter, or you need to check a bag, the time windows for
accepting those are set by the scheduled departure time. If your
plane is still in the air or hasn't even left its origination
airport (and, for the sake of argument here, we will assume you
are flying from a smaller airport that doesn't have other
aircraft that can easily be reassigned to your flight, so you
know it will be delayed), it doesn't matter: they still close the
check-in and baggage 45 minutes (on American; YMMV by airline)
before scheduled departure. So you have no choice but to get
there early and wait unless your airline actually declares the
flight delayed when they know it will happen.
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
The app is mac/i os-only, though.
halapro wrote 1 day ago:
How's this related to anything?
9935c101ab17a66 wrote 11 hours 8 min ago:
Right, but the question was âhow does this app make money?â
And the app being ios/mac only isnt at all relevant to that
question.
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
It means it's strictly unavailable for ~80% of people out there
on Windows/Linux/Android?
MajimasEyepatch wrote 1 day ago:
Thatâs true globally, but in the US, iPhones are 60% of the
smartphone market. In the US, iPhone users are also younger,
more affluent, more educated, and I suspect more likely to
fly than Android users. iOS users also dominate in app
spending. And from a practical standpoint, 93% of iPhone
users are on the latest version of iOS within six months,
compared to 20% of Android users, which is huge when it comes
to development costs.
Source:
(HTM) [1]: https://adapty.io/blog/iphone-vs-android-users/
halapro wrote 1 day ago:
Ok, post that as a top comment, it's completely irrelevant to
the comment that it replied to.
Like GP, I'm also a paid subscriber and I couldn't care less
where else it's available. If anything, it being a native app
rather than a multiplatform JS wrapper is a plus to me.
AdamN wrote 1 day ago:
It's a business - they're targeting revenues. Making it
multi-platform would take alot of effort and the value just
isn't there for them right now. The smart move is for them
to become awesome on iOS (maybe they're close?) and then
create an Android CX.
BTW, them being iOS-only means they're probably getting lots
of marketing support from Apple and other perks. That can
really help a startup.
ohhman11 wrote 1 day ago:
>It means it's strictly unavailable for ~80% of people out
there on Windows/Linux/Android?
Those platforms don't generate revenue
ymolodtsov wrote 1 day ago:
I've seen many developers who released the same app on both
iOS and Android and realized that Apple platforms still
provide them with 80% of revenue for 20% of users.
Not that many people on Android are willing to pay $60 for an
app.
ipsento606 wrote 1 day ago:
Developing for Android is also a much worse developer
experience than developing for iOS, because there are
thousands of devices to support, and much greater
stratification of operating system customizations and older
versions. [1] is just one example of the kind of problems
app developers face on Android
(HTM) [1]: https://dontkillmyapp.com/
kelvinjps10 wrote 18 hours 2 min ago:
IOS it's work at killing apps that android. Some software
manufacturers in android allow you to bypass it in the
settings.
xd1936 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, iOS would never kill an app in the background to
try and save battery
simonklitj wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, but the question is how it makes money, not whether it
could make more money by expanding into other OSâs.
throwaway290 wrote 1 day ago:
pro features and IAP
daikon899 wrote 1 day ago:
Very pleasant UI. Good job!
reason3316 wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is terrific, well worth the subscription cost. I'm delighted to
see a replacement for the last part of FlightAware I still used.
ZeWaka wrote 1 day ago:
If you fly a lot, you might also be aware of the National Airspace
System Status: [1] It also has links to a lot of other information
useful for people in the airline industry.
I find the Airport Arrival Demand Chart to be good for seeing a big
picture of all the flights:
(HTM) [1]: https://nasstatus.faa.gov/
(HTM) [2]: https://www.fly.faa.gov/aadc/
donalhunt wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
The equivalent for Europe is probably [1] (at least what I use when
there is major disruption).
(HTM) [1]: https://www.public.nm.eurocontrol.int/PUBPORTAL/gateway/spec...
wlonkly wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
And here's Canada's:
(HTM) [1]: https://spaces.navcanada.ca/workspace/ois/
jpalawaga wrote 1 day ago:
I've never seen the nasstatus page, but I have seen the OIS page,
which I use frequently when experiencing delays to find out what's
going on: [1] The links on the NAS page are also really good. nice
share!
(HTM) [1]: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/?legacy=true
aresant wrote 1 day ago:
Clicked this and was hopeful it was a TSA-line-tracker
Anybody have a good solution that's utilizing actual traveler data vs
the (non existent atm) TSA data?
halapro wrote 1 day ago:
How do you expect that to work? Automatic reporting is impossible,
you have to rely on individuals to arrive there, open the app and
take a guess. Then by the time you see the report the line is long
gone (or tripled)
This request has no basis in reality.
TheDong wrote 1 day ago:
Ideally the TSA at each airport would measure it and release it.
They should be measuring it anyway since they should both have
efficiency targets for how much of a delay they introduce, and also
so that they can show data about how much or little inconvenience
they cause when DOGE finally comes to cut one of the actually
utterly useless government expenditures.
Since the TSA doesn't seem to be releasing this data though, apple
or google could spy on GPS and motion data for individuals to
estimate when people entire the line and pass through security, and
derive a better-than-nothing estimate. It does seem like the
government refusing to do something, and apple/google stepping in
and doing a government-like thing is a norm, so even though I'm
joking I wouldn't even be that surprised.
awill wrote 1 day ago:
Not sure how they're getting their data, but
(HTM) [1]: https://tsa.fromthetraytable.com/
Shank wrote 1 day ago:
> Due to the federal funding lapse, this airport has temporarily
suspended wait time reporting. Allow significantly more time at
security and check with your airline for flight status.
Well, some of them directly from TSA?
eagerpace wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe this week is an edge but a lot of airports, including mine, are
showing no issues, but have major issues outside of flights being on
time
exidy wrote 1 day ago:
While I appreciate the aesthetics of this feature I actually fear it
represents a loss of focus for Flighty. As a traveller, I don't need a
global view of airport disruptions, I need relevant info for my
flights.
Given the prominent TV Mode button in the interface, this update seems
to be about competing with Flightradar24, who sell business
subscriptions for airports and related sectors for information
displays.
dewey wrote 1 day ago:
Having the departure / arrival boards of the airports in the app in a
easy to find and uniform way is a great feature and is exactly what I
pay Flighty for. Having to find this information on airport websites
is horrible and the alternative websites for that are usually filled
with ads or behind a lock screen.
I'd say that's exactly the focus for Flighty to have that.
ymolodtsov wrote 1 day ago:
I disagree. I live in Lisbon and the local airport is in a pretty bad
condition these days. It's helpful to be able to get a general view.
bronco21016 wrote 1 day ago:
I agree. The reason I love Flighty vs FlightAware or Flightradar24 is
because the app is solely focused on my flights. The real-time
tactical information about delays and inbound aircraft is so good
that it is very heavily used by airline employees since even the
airlines are not great about providing this data in a timely fashion
to their front line employees.
The dashboard is really nice and if it remained free I could see
integrating it into a display's playlist in my office but, I highly
doubt this doesn't turn into a hefty subscription service.
jitl wrote 1 day ago:
it sounds like the app already does what you need it to do.
developers can spend a few hours on something other than #1 most
pressing core feature every now and then.
JCharante wrote 1 day ago:
the app has so many bugs and missing features, I'm not a heavy user
just like 60 flights a year but I love and hate flighty
kylehotchkiss wrote 1 day ago:
They can do both things at once. Airports desperately need to be
displaying accurate information and stop letting gate agents make
random calls based on their interpreting of company policy
logifail wrote 1 day ago:
> Airports desperately need to be displaying accurate information
[..]
Airports and airlines may have information that they deliberately
do not share with passengers.
For example: a large European airport that I once did some work for
ran a trial in which they announced departure boarding gates
significantly earlier. The effect was that passengers went to
their gates earlier.
The side effect was that retail revenues in the terminal fell
during the trial. Yes, this was a metric.
Guess what? They decided not to proceed with announcing departure
gates earlier and went back to the previous system.
nixass wrote 1 day ago:
A website requiring me to download their app for detailed report on
certain airport is not worth my time.
LeoPanthera wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is an app. Not a website. The website just tells you about
the app.
I think you probably know that though.
jt2190 wrote 1 day ago:
I was thinking this was something to help estimate the time to get
through airport security. It's still very cool, though. I love the TV
mode!
Esophagus4 wrote 1 day ago:
MyTSA has that (or⦠I presume will have that again once TSA is back
online).
Individual airports also may have wait times on their website, but
results can vary.
jt2190 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, I think that flighty already aggregates various data sources
to predict flight delays, I thought maybe they were expanding to
include security wait times.
jryio wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is a good representation of what craft - compounded over time -
gives you.
Everything from on design, to features, to data integrations. It's
everything that vibe coding and agents don't get you. I appreciate
their craft.
amiantos wrote 1 day ago:
Why can't you just like an app, why do you have to turn it into a
personal statement about your dislike of AI? If AI was not involved,
why bring it up?
Atalocke wrote 1 day ago:
OP makes a good point. No vibe coded app could do this. AI grants
productivity. Not taste, wisdom, or talent.
jryio wrote 1 day ago:
I imagine you live your life contextually, whereby your daily
experiences are felt against the backdrop of the immediate events
you, then your community, and eventually the world at large. If the
rest of the world was involved, why not bring it up?
enraged_camel wrote 1 day ago:
What does this drivel even mean?
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
Someone's drunk and using AI, presumably.
jryio wrote 1 day ago:
Someone's human and likes typos. Might be the last signal of
humanity online if you think about it .
gaintchicken wrote 1 day ago:
Fascinating, I was struck by the exact opposite. The text overflowed
the search bar, the bottom table was difficult to read, the airports
all just kind of pulsed brown every couple seconds, I assumed this
was a slopped together weekend project someone was advertising here.
sefrost wrote 1 day ago:
This web app has very little design-wise in common with the iOS
app. It doesnât even serve the same use case.
Theyâve hurt their brand here really, which is a high quality
native app experience that makes sense of a lot of granular data
from different sources.
jryio wrote 1 day ago:
I am commenting on the entire app experience on iOS not a single
web app they released today (which unfortunately is what can be
linked on HN).
Read the other comments and you'll see the same, download the iOS
app and use that as your basis for commenting.
enraged_camel wrote 1 day ago:
But the iOS app is not what was shared. Why would someone use an
iOS app they haven't used as the basis for their comment?
Especially since you yourself did not mention it in your top
comment?
Gagarin1917 wrote 1 day ago:
Challenge accepted
annexrichmond wrote 1 day ago:
I donât get why they get so much praise for design with such a big
design flaw:
If a flight is delayed even 1 minute, itâs highlighted as red text.
This throws me off every time.
Google does not this. It still shows as green if itâs just a few
minutes delayed.
Iâve reported this to the Flighty team and they ignored me so I can
only assume they think this is a good idea, and I will therefore
never pay for their app.
alberth wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is very pretty, but Iâm not giving up FlightAware anytime
soon.
I travel a lot, and frequently encounter flight delays. Itâs mind
boggling difficult to find out where my plane is when itâs delayed
via Flighty. This and a few other things, FlightAware gets right.
I feel like Flighty is for rare leisure traveler and FlightAware is
for weekly business and/or pilot traveler.
Iâve honestly had better luck with iOS built in flight tracker than
Flighty itself.
lelandbatey wrote 1 day ago:
I agree, I find that the "MiseryMap" from flightaware is less
"pretty" but much more informationally dense.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/
danpalmer wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is in a weird place because I'm a rare/leisure traveller
and wow Flighty nowhere near reasonably priced for that market.
I used it in free mode when I was on iOS, but it would be ~£10 per
trip for something that would improve my life less than a coffee at
the airport.
In my opinion they need to aggressively cut costly features (like
weather data), and if they have different international data feeds,
perhaps do region locked pricing. I don't fly to the US much, so
let me buy a Europe and Asia subscription and skip the US costs. Or
vice-versa. It would have needed to be ~£10 a year at most.
zeroonetwothree wrote 1 day ago:
I fly around 6x/yr but I still found it useful enough to get the
lifetime plan. I suppose if I only flew once per year I wouldn't
have gotten it, but I don't mind paying ~$10/flight (probably
even lower by now, and who knows what it will drop to by the time
Flighty stops working, hopefully more like ~$1/flight). A typical
trip might cost in the range of ~thousands of dollars so $10 to
reduce my stress levels when there is a delay is worth it in my
book.
For example... if there's a delay and so because you found out
sooner you can stay home an extra hour instead of sitting at the
airport I would pay $10 for that.
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
What does it actually do? People seem to get very excited about
it but my flight status is always either âon the planeâ or
ânot on the planeâ
bodhiJhawken wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm a touring lighting designer, I fly anywhere from 20-120
times a year. Every fellow LD I know uses Flighty, any time i
get delayed flighty tells me before the airline does.
I especially love that it usually tells me or warns me about a
delay before I leave the lounge, so i get to spend some more
time relaxing. That and of course the amazing data in your
flighty passport!
CyberDildonics wrote 1 day ago:
This looks like you signed up for hacker news to post ads on
this ad.
newscracker wrote 1 day ago:
The promise is that it informs you quickly about flight delays,
flight cancellations and gate changes. In my limited
experience, it didnât work satisfactorily for a flight delay
of a few hours. It could not provide any reliable updates.
Itâs a nice app and service, but I wouldnât trust all those
reviews that are like âI knew before the aircraft pilot
knewâ. It has its own limitations.
dhosek wrote 1 day ago:
I donât see any value in knowing before the pilot knows.
Iâve 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 wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
toast0 wrote 1 day ago:
What do you do with that information though?
bronco21016 wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
Nah theyâll ruin it. Iâd rather Flighty charge a
couple hundred bucks and maintain a comfortable
business than let my employer wreck a good thing.
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 1 day ago:
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.
joezydeco wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty routinely tells me about cancelled flights before any other
app or the airline itself.
trillic wrote 1 day ago:
FlightAware and Flighty are usually within seconds of each other
and always ahead of the airlines.
lobochrome wrote 1 day ago:
(except United)
xattt wrote 1 day ago:
The bubble fonts are a little too cheery for something as stressful
as flight delays.
jesterson wrote 1 day ago:
I wish the data would be more reliable (or they have better sanity
checks) though. One of my flights suddenly "departed" one hour+
before scheduled time. I almost got heart attack.
Needless to say there were no objective reasons for that - airport
dashboard was showing proper time and flight departed with 30min
delay (displayed by Flighty as 1.5hr delay).
ezfe wrote 1 day ago:
I've never seen what you describe but I have seen other data
issues. It usually depends on the airline, the same types of
problems occur with the same airlines.
I've asked and they say there's little they can do, the airlines
systems are broadcasting this data and some airlines are better at
it than others.
jesterson wrote 1 day ago:
To be fair, it was the first majour hiccup with the app. Usually
it is quite correct.
It's hard to believe airline broadcasted incorrect data in my
case. Even if that was the case, they could have cross checked it
with airport data, which is way easier to obtain compared to
airline stream.
And also they could have additional checks for cases when aicraft
"changes" departure time to 1 hr before scheduled at around 2
hours before scheduled time. It should be highly unusual case.
enos_feedler wrote 1 day ago:
Notice a lot of Canadian airports are yellow right now. Is this normal?
chiefgeek wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is a great app. I travel a lot and use it all the time to
manage my flights. Highly recommend.
ryeguy_24 wrote 1 day ago:
I rarely bookmark things but just did. For some reason, I never get
this data concisely from Google search and always look for it. Nice
job.
reader9274 wrote 1 day ago:
I have about 3000+ bookmarks in my KaraKeep instance
pinkmuffinere wrote 1 day ago:
I think this may be a 'bug': as you zoom into the US west coast, SAN is
visible before LAX. But LAX serves much more people every day, so a
random person is much more likely to care about LAX. Intuitively, it
seems to me that LAX should show up first. That could be intentional,
but I can't think of a good reason why that choice would be made.
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
Not only that, but airports blink in-and-out of existence as you zoom
or pan the map around. It can't even decide if it wants to show a
certain airport or not.
mh- wrote 1 day ago:
Google Maps has had this bug with street names not revealing based on
any rational priority at varying zoom levels.. for like a decade.
I'm going to start using this as an interview question for people to
solve.
16bytes wrote 1 day ago:
If you think this is an easy problem to solve, here's an old
article that discusses some of the challenges in doing so:
(HTM) [1]: https://medium.com/google-design/google-maps-cb0326d165f5
mh- wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think it's an easy problem to solve at all, that's why I
quipped about making it an interview problem. :) In an interview,
I'm just interested in hearing people talk through trying to
solve difficult problems. Getting to a solution is incidental.
And it's way more fun when I don't know of a go-to solution,
either.
jerlam wrote 1 day ago:
I think the map is biased towards airports with the most disruptions,
not the largest.
phinnaeus wrote 1 day ago:
Similar in Australia, BNE shows up before SYD.
Edit: actually it's even weirder. Here's the zoom levels I see, from
zoomed out, to zoomed in:
- BNE, MEL
- BNE, SYD, MEL
- BNE, CBR, MEL (??)
- BNE, SYD, CBR, MEL
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
This screams vibe-coded slop. Think about it, if you were to
implement zoom based detail level, you would have to try hard to
introduce a bug on line 3, yet it happens to hit prod.
Yet, this thread is full of people defending this pre-alpha quality
thing.
chupchap wrote 1 day ago:
Haha I came in to write the exact same thing. Such a weird choice
hmartin wrote 1 day ago:
Love Flightly, one of the best apps ever. Beautiful design + incredibly
useful info.
sneak wrote 1 day ago:
Flighty is poorly designed.
Itâs one of those slick apps designed to superficially look nice
without actually being well-thought-out. Thatâs not what design is
or should mean; thatâs just aesthetics.
Case in point: one of the most important pieces of data for a flight,
its duration, is displayed in the tiniest type size on the flight
info display pane, in light grey text on a slightly darker grey
background. Itâs bordering on illegible.
It also doesnât surface boarding time (or countdown to same), which
is the single most important piece of data a flight tracker can give
you.
oslem wrote 1 day ago:
I use their widgets more than the app itself. They display the most
important information I need well imo.
nemothekid wrote 1 day ago:
>one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its
duration,
What is your use case for Flighty, and why would this information
be important at all?
sneak wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
I regularly fly all over the world, and it's nice to know how
long my flights are going to be? I'm not always flying direct,
and seeing the lengths of the legs and the lengths of the
layovers allows me to plan my day and my sleep schedule.
signatoremo wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
You do have landing time for all of the legs? Thatâs more
useful than duration. For your sleep, you care about landing
says, at midnight, as oppose to a 10 hr flight from Paris that
may or may not arrive during day time at the destination.
zeroonetwothree wrote 1 day ago:
Why is duration important? Surely you already knew what it was when
you booked and it's not like it changes. I can't say that I've ever
wanted to double check the duration of my flight.
friendzis wrote 1 day ago:
Knowing when I land, especially if there are any disturbances, is
probably THE most important piece of information with regards to
a flight. I have already planned my airport arrival, at least for
the first leg, and the worst scenario is I have to stare at a
screen/book for a bit longer. If the landing is delayed I might
need to make amendments to the plans for the rest of the day.
fourwood wrote 1 day ago:
The complaint is about the visibility of the flight duration
(e.g. "this flight will take 1h 50m"), not the landing time
(e.g. "this flight will land at 11:25am"). The landing time is
prominently displayed in the flight info pane. Knowing your
flight duration (gate-to-gate time) is not impacted whatsoever
by flight delays, so I think you're conflating these two things
inappropriately.
rconti wrote 1 day ago:
I think the design is great; my only gripe is it's awful on the
iPad mini. But so are Apple apps. They think it makes sense for the
side drawer (in portrait mode) to cover half the screen. Which is
especially insane in apps with maps where the drawer COVERS THE
"YOU ARE HERE" DOT.
exidy wrote 1 day ago:
> one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its
duration
Flighty is all about getting you to the airport in time for your
flight, so the most important pieces of information are things like
departure times, connection times, delay information, terminal and
boarding gate. These are prioritised in the interface.
The flight duration is set when you book the flight and it's not
going to change, there is no reason to prioritise this.
> It also doesnât surface boarding time
I think this would be useful but difficult data to get. Airlines
sometimes will push boarding announcements to their own apps but I
doubt they would agree to feed Flighty.
ymolodtsov wrote 1 day ago:
Boarding times are basically not reliable at all. Any time I come
10m after the official boarding time on the ticket there's still
a standing line.
japanuspus wrote 1 day ago:
Just don't try this on Ryan Air. A good friend got stuck at the
airport on a Sunday night after being denied boarding because
he waited out the standing line sitting on a bench right by the
gate.
As soon as the last person standing walked through the
checkpoint the gate crew closed the gate -- and completely
ignored my friend when he showed up 10 seconds later.
gib444 wrote 1 day ago:
How did his actual boarding time match up with the
contractually agreed boarding close time?
Most budget airlines pull this crap but I've started pushing
back especially when it's poor weather outside and they
expect us to wait in the rain just to improve their metrics
They need some EU261 denied boarding threats/claims to sort
them out
ggsp wrote 1 day ago:
My guess is that's because boarding a plane is a little bit
like being an extra for a film, it's a hurry up and wait
situation. If they printed the exact time boarding starts and
people showed up then (and later), no flight would ever board
on time. Better for the airline to print an earlier time and
have people wait longer, so they can board as quickly as
possible. Every minute behind schedule costs the airline money.
drdec wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
AA displays the boarding time in the app instead of the
departure time once the flight gets close enough (like same
day)
>If they printed the exact time boarding starts and people
showed up then (and later), no flight would ever board on
time
I don't understand the logic. If everyone is there at the
stated boarding time and the airline has correctly allocated
enough time for boarding, aren't they winning?
ggsp wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
The point is "everyone is there at the stated boarding
time" never actually happens IRL, so you give an earlier
time.
donalhunt wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
200 people can't board at the same second. Reality is you
want orderly boarding over the course of ~ 10-15mins
depending on passenger makeup. Crew also need to account
for passenger with additional needs, catering recharge, etc
ymolodtsov wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, and the actual time is probably too close to the
official take off time.
But this is why Flighty probably doesn't show it, it's
irrelevant.
yosito wrote 1 day ago:
In my extensive travel experience, more than half the time the
boarding time listed at the gate isn't even correct.
ZeWaka wrote 1 day ago:
Boarding is hard because it's at the discretion of the airlines,
yeah. Departure time is easier because of
(HTM) [1]: https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT
exidy wrote 1 day ago:
> Departure time is easier because of [1] If you're in the US!
(HTM) [1]: https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT
ZeWaka wrote 1 day ago:
True. I think you'd have to scrape it from sites that expose
it or pay for an API for a country like the UK.
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