[HN Gopher] Flighty Airports
___________________________________________________________________
Flighty Airports
Author : skogstokig
Score : 517 points
Date : 2026-03-25 00:29 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (flighty.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (flighty.com)
| hmartin wrote:
| Love Flightly, one of the best apps ever. Beautiful design +
| incredibly useful info.
| sneak wrote:
| Flighty is poorly designed.
|
| It's one of those slick apps designed to superficially look
| nice without actually being well-thought-out. That's not what
| design is or should mean; that's 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. It's bordering on illegible.
|
| It also doesn't surface boarding time (or countdown to same),
| which is the single most important piece of data a flight
| tracker can give you.
| exidy wrote:
| > 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 doesn't 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.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Boarding is hard because it's at the discretion of the
| airlines, yeah. Departure time is easier because of
| https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT
| exidy wrote:
| > Departure time is easier because of
| https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT
|
| If you're in the US!
| ZeWaka wrote:
| 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.
| yosito wrote:
| In my extensive travel experience, more than half the time
| the boarding time listed at the gate isn't even correct.
| ymolodtsov wrote:
| 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.
| ggsp wrote:
| 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.
| ymolodtsov wrote:
| 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.
| drdec wrote:
| 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?
| donalhunt wrote:
| 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
| japanuspus wrote:
| 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:
| 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
| rconti wrote:
| 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.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _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:
| 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.
| oslem wrote:
| I use their widgets more than the app itself. They display
| the most important information I need well imo.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| 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.
| phinnaeus wrote:
| 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
| chupchap wrote:
| Haha I came in to write the exact same thing. Such a weird
| choice
| friendzis wrote:
| 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.
| jerlam wrote:
| I think the map is biased towards airports with the most
| disruptions, not the largest.
| mh- wrote:
| 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:
| If you think this is an easy problem to solve, here's an old
| article that discusses some of the challenges in doing so:
|
| https://medium.com/google-design/google-maps-cb0326d165f5
| mh- wrote:
| 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.
| friendzis wrote:
| 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.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| 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:
| I have about 3000+ bookmarks in my KaraKeep instance
| chiefgeek wrote:
| Flighty is a great app. I travel a lot and use it all the time to
| manage my flights. Highly recommend.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Notice a lot of Canadian airports are yellow right now. Is this
| normal?
| jryio wrote:
| 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.
| jesterson wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| xattt wrote:
| The bubble fonts are a little too cheery for something as
| stressful as flight delays.
| alberth wrote:
| Flighty is very pretty, but I'm not giving up FlightAware
| anytime soon.
|
| I travel a lot, and frequently encounter flight delays. It's
| mind boggling difficult to find out where my plane is when it's
| 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.
|
| I've honestly had better luck with iOS built in flight tracker
| than Flighty itself.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Flighty routinely tells me about cancelled flights before any
| other app or the airline itself.
| trillic wrote:
| FlightAware and Flighty are usually within seconds of each
| other and always ahead of the airlines.
| lobochrome wrote:
| (except United)
| danpalmer wrote:
| 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
| ~PS10 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
| ~PS10 a year at most.
| bombcar wrote:
| What does it actually do? People seem to get very excited
| about it but my flight status is always either "on the
| plane" or "not on the plane"
| newscracker wrote:
| The promise is that it informs you quickly about flight
| delays, flight cancellations and gate changes. In my
| limited experience, it didn't work satisfactorily for a
| flight delay of a few hours. It could not provide any
| reliable updates.
|
| It's a nice app and service, but I wouldn't trust all
| those reviews that are like "I knew before the aircraft
| pilot knew". It has its own limitations.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| What do you do with that information though?
| bronco21016 wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| Nah they'll ruin it. I'd rather Flighty charge a couple
| hundred bucks and maintain a comfortable business than
| let my employer wreck a good thing.
| dhosek wrote:
| I don't see any value in knowing before the pilot knows.
| I've 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:
| 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.
| bodhiJhawken wrote:
| I'm 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:
| This looks like you signed up for hacker news to post ads
| on this ad.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| 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.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| I agree, I find that the "MiseryMap" from flightaware is less
| "pretty" but much more informationally dense.
| https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/
| annexrichmond wrote:
| I don't get why they get so much praise for design with such a
| big design flaw:
|
| If a flight is delayed even 1 minute, it's highlighted as red
| text. This throws me off every time.
|
| Google does not this. It still shows as green if it's just a
| few minutes delayed.
|
| I've 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.
| Gagarin1917 wrote:
| Challenge accepted
| gaintchicken wrote:
| 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.
| jryio wrote:
| 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:
| 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?
| sefrost wrote:
| This web app has very little design-wise in common with the
| iOS app. It doesn't even serve the same use case.
|
| They've 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.
| amiantos wrote:
| 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?
| jryio wrote:
| 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:
| What does this drivel even mean?
| bombcar wrote:
| Someone's drunk and using AI, presumably.
| jryio wrote:
| Someone's human and likes typos. Might be the last signal
| of humanity online if you think about it .
| Atalocke wrote:
| OP makes a good point. No vibe coded app could do this. AI
| grants productivity. Not taste, wisdom, or talent.
| jt2190 wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| nixass wrote:
| A website requiring me to download their app for detailed report
| on certain airport is not worth my time.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Flighty is an app. Not a website. The website just tells you
| about the app.
|
| I think you probably know that though.
| exidy wrote:
| 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.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| 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:
| > 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.
| jitl wrote:
| 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:
| 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
| bronco21016 wrote:
| 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.
| ymolodtsov wrote:
| 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.
| dewey wrote:
| 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.
| eagerpace wrote:
| 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
| aresant wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| awill wrote:
| Not sure how they're getting their data, but
| https://tsa.fromthetraytable.com/
| Shank wrote:
| > 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?
| TheDong wrote:
| 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.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| If you fly a lot, you might also be aware of the National
| Airspace System Status: https://nasstatus.faa.gov/
|
| 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: https://www.fly.faa.gov/aadc/
| jpalawaga wrote:
| 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: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/?legacy=true
|
| The links on the NAS page are also really good. nice share!
| donalhunt wrote:
| The equivalent for Europe is probably
| https://www.public.nm.eurocontrol.int/PUBPORTAL/gateway/spec...
| (at least what I use when there is major disruption).
| reason3316 wrote:
| Flighty is terrific, well worth the subscription cost. I'm
| delighted to see a replacement for the last part of FlightAware I
| still used.
| daikon899 wrote:
| Very pleasant UI. Good job!
| culopatin wrote:
| How does an app like this make money? I made an app that I simply
| can't promote because it would bankrupt me. Every person I share
| it with thinks it's genius and been using it but if it ever hits
| critical mass without me knowing it, id be those guys with the
| "my cloud provider reamed me overnight" posts.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| pro features and IAP
| nemothekid wrote:
| I use the Flighty app pretty often, and its $60/year.
| friendzis wrote:
| The app is mac/i os-only, though.
| halapro wrote:
| How's this related to anything?
| friendzis wrote:
| It means it's strictly unavailable for ~80% of people out
| there on Windows/Linux/Android?
| simonklitj wrote:
| Yes, but the question is how it makes money, not whether
| it could make more money by expanding into other OS's.
| ymolodtsov wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
|
| https://dontkillmyapp.com/ is just one example of the
| kind of problems app developers face on Android
| xd1936 wrote:
| Yeah, iOS would never kill an app in the background to
| try and save battery
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| IOS it's work at killing apps that android. Some software
| manufacturers in android allow you to bypass it in the
| settings.
| ohhman11 wrote:
| >It means it's strictly unavailable for ~80% of people
| out there on Windows/Linux/Android?
|
| Those platforms don't generate revenue
| AdamN wrote:
| 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.
| halapro wrote:
| 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.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| That's 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: https://adapty.io/blog/iphone-vs-android-users/
| kimos wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| 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:
| I've ran the numbers and the APIs I have to pay for would be
| more expensive. I've tried caching the data which works to
| some degree but still a negative unless I really degrade the
| experience
| vasco wrote:
| 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.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| 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).
| GJim wrote:
| Some people wonder why kids climb trees.
| jasode wrote:
| _> 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. (https://www.flightaware.com/commercial/firehose/doc
| umentatio...)
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| They said "an app _like_ this " and went on to talk about
| _their_ app (which is undisclosed) which can 't be
| monetized.
| drcongo wrote:
| 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 $59.99_. Apple have made
| such a fucking mess of in-app purchases that we end up with
| this kind of rubbish, and I can 't place any trust in a
| developer who allows their in-app purchases list to look
| like this. So they just lost a sale.
| culopatin wrote:
| You don't know anything about my app though. I just couldn't
| believe that many people would pay this subscription to keep
| it going. I'm not trying to make money, I just don't need it
| to drain my account
| chinathrow wrote:
| Why do you need a cloud provider? Can't a 5$ VPS do the job?
| esseph wrote:
| That's just a cloud with a different company's name attached.
| jachee wrote:
| Yeah, but a $5 VPS won't suddenly surprise you with a five-
| figure bill.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| What's your app? Where do the costs come from?
| ggsp wrote:
| Have you asked people how much they'd be willing to pay?
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| Subscriptions on the iOS app. Per SensorTower, it's making
| ~$1m/month.
|
| https://app.sensortower.com/overview/1358823008?country=US
| barbs wrote:
| Makes me wonder then why they can't afford a team of Android
| developers to make the Android version.
| kimos wrote:
| Because they don't want to?
|
| It's not just about money. It's 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 isn't
| just "hire more".
|
| As you agreed with, they are successful. Maybe they're
| happy with that.
| avalys wrote:
| It's not that they can't afford it, it's that Android users
| aren't worth the investment.
| aurmc wrote:
| 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.
| culopatin wrote:
| That to me is amazing. I would not pay that much for this and
| I guess I project that on the user base
| aledevv wrote:
| 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.
| peterchane wrote:
| I wish they would add hotel reservations. Loss of focus but I
| want it as much as flight tracking.
| peterchane wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| "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
| sssilver wrote:
| 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:
| did u see the TV mode link? i wish more visualization sites had
| that.
| globular-toast wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| friendzis wrote:
| Note: the web interface exposes minimal info, the rest is hidden
| in a mac-only app. Don't bother.
| cantalopes wrote:
| I mean, still better than having to go to airports' official
| pages
| friendzis wrote:
| 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.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Was going to say this. I'm getting real tired of sites trying
| to force me to download their spyware apps
| dewey wrote:
| 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.
| mi_lk wrote:
| You only really need to know when (departure/arrival time) and
| where (terminal/gate), no?
|
| What else necessary info that's missing?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| 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.
| bodhiJhawken wrote:
| Flighty is generally built around supporting your flight
| experience. I'm 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 it's 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!
| malfist wrote:
| You created this account 14 minutes prior to this post.
| Forgive me if I don't trust your testimonials. Feels very
| astroturf
| bodhiJhawken wrote:
| 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
| xvector wrote:
| 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)
| bzillins wrote:
| Flighty was recommended to me by a flight attendant and I
| also have been notified hours ahead of the airlines by it.
| malfist wrote:
| You logged in after a 5 year hiatus to advertise for an
| app?
| mi_lk wrote:
| Keep it up, I think you're onto something. Sus
| atonse wrote:
| 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)
| bob1029 wrote:
| > 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.
| dneri wrote:
| 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 they've really thought through every feature. It's the
| gold standard for apps.
| oompydoompy74 wrote:
| What's up with all the complaining that this wonderful app isn't
| available on non Apple platforms? Android isn't 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.
| JDEW wrote:
| CDG shows yellow ("minor issues"), 65% of planes arrive on time,
| 0% cancelled. FRA shows green ("normal operations") 59% of planes
| arrive on time, 4% cancelled.
|
| Surely that's wrong?
| elAhmo wrote:
| Flighty is nearly useless when using low-cost carriers, such as
| RyanAir, WizzAir, etc, which seem to be predominantly covering
| destinations I use.
| codingjoe wrote:
| Does it show ICEy conditions too?
| nathancahill wrote:
| MiseryMap: https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/
| ViktorRay wrote:
| Pretty interesting link as well. Thanks for sharing
| degenerate wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Any way to see other airports? I never travel to the US
| HoldOnAMinute wrote:
| Where's Alaska and Hawaii ?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| What would be super useful is an indicator of how long it takes
| to get through TSA
| roysting wrote:
| https://babylonbee.com/news/terrorists-give-up-after-three-h...
| sklargh wrote:
| Also recommend nasstatus.FAA.gov
| socalgal2 wrote:
| 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.
| bl4kers wrote:
| No description or about page or anything? Seems pretty bare
| bones.
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