From the minute you book your flight until you leave the airport after you land, the Flighty app and its Flighty Pro service give travelers every bit of information you could possibly want to know about flying.
Flighty puts everything you need to know in one place for me when I fly, and that's why the Flighty Pro app is my favorite travel tool, period.
Flighty is a flight information tracking app that ingests and distills all of your flight's data into a clean, sleek interface. The app is often the first to alert you to critical changes like delays and cancelations. It can also help you dig into the minutiae of air travel like how old your aircraft is, your estimated taxi time before and after takeoff, and what the weather looks like at your destination. Most recently, the app also added a tool analyzing your connection times to tell you if you have enough time to make your flight.
Perhaps best of all, when you link your Flighty account to your email (or, better yet, your TripIt account), the app does all the work for you. You don't have to lift a finger for Flighty to start working for you once you've set up your account.
One thing to note: At the time of publication, Flighty is only available on the Apple App Store. Sorry, Android users.
Flighty is a free app, but a Flighty Pro subscription starts at about $50 a year.
I haven't regretted my Flighty Pro purchase for a second, even leveling up to the “Lifetime” subscription option, because I know I'll be using this tool for years to come.
Let's dig into why I love this travel tool so much and why I think it should be a staple app on the home screens of all avid travelers.
At Thrifty Traveler, we don't accept freebies. We use our own points, miles, or cash to pay for every flight, hotel, or service you see reviewed here – including this one!
Flighty vs. Flighty Pro: What's the Difference?
Flighty is a free app you can download from your smartphone's app store and Flighty Pro is the subscription that gets you access to more alerts and details for all of your travels.
Flighty Pro is included for your first flight after you download Flighty, so you don't have to wait and wonder what it's like to get going. After that, you have to decide on a plan.
Here are the differences between the free Flighty and Flighty Pro as Flighty lists them in the App Store.
Free Flighty app:
- Flight data
- Live data
- Weather
- Historical flight lookup for the past 365 days
- Lock screen widgets (limited refresh)
- Flight route data
- Aircraft model and image
- Personal flight log and map
Flighty Pro: (From $49 a year)
- Push alerts
- Where's my plane tracking for 25 hours pre-flight
- Live inbound plane tracking
- Live lock screen widgets
- FAA delay alerts
- Delay predictions
- Arrival forecast
- TripIt sync
- Calendar sync
- Email forwarding
- Tail number
- Taxi times
As you can see, all the fastest, immediate data from Flighty comes under the “Pro” service, including all push alerts.
But if you only fly a few times a year and don't need up-to-the-second flight updates, the free app has a ton of valuable data, too.
How to Use Flighty Pro
Here's how Flighty Pro works for me.
First, Flighty Pro keeps track of all my travel data, including flights I took many years before the Flighty App even launched. When I connected my TripIt account to Flighty, it pulled in all the flights I had taken since I started using TripIt in 2011. Instantly, I had 14 years of flight data at my fingertips and a fully formed map of dots and lines to prove it.
All of your past flights go into a section of the app called “My Flight Log.” They're listed chronologically, but every flight is displayed linearly on the map.
You get data like this when you touch one of your past flights. The example flight I'll use is a recent trip I took from New York (JFK) to Geneva (GVA) flying SWISS Economy.
These screenshots were taken after the flight, so the app has fully fleshed out all of this data. At the top, you see the flight map, including the exact route we took to get to GVA. It has the date, the flag of the carrier, and the flight number.
The green text means my flight was on time or early! We (impossibly) departed JFK early at 7:38 p.m. on a Thursday night and landed 16 minutes early in Geneva, too. Underneath the Geneva airport code, you can see information on where our baggage claim area is, too.
If you scroll below that primary information, you get more. It starts with your confirmation code, which you can easily copy if you're checking in for your flight. Plus, you can put in your own seat information (it copies over from some reservations and not from others) so you can put away your airline's app after you scan your boarding pass.
One of my favorite app features is the “Arrival Forecast,” which shows how often the plane arrives early, on time, late, or not at all. This SWISS flight, from a sample size of 59 flights, arrives early more than half of the time, which was reassuring.
Below the arrival forecasts are the details of the plane itself. The “Where's My Plane?” section is really important and is usually the most indicative of whether or not you have delays.
There's also specific tail number information about your plane, including fun and interesting facts like the plane's age and first flight. This can help you figure out what kind of product you'll get onboard and can help you track a plane's history if you want to nerd out even more. A few times in the last year, Flighty has told me it was my second time on a specific airplane – showing me when and where I'd flown the exact plane before.
Below that is the “Detailed Timeline” section, which gets you up-to-the-minute information about your journey. For instance, at JFK on a Thursday night right before the New Year's holiday, I knew we were due for a long time on the tarmac. Before takeoff, we were “scheduled” for 10 minutes on the tarmac, but Flighty budgeted us for about 25 minutes. Flighty's estimate was much closer to the end result, as you can see in the “Taxi” section below.
Finally, at the bottom of the app, Flighty aggregates SWISS's phone number, website, and social media accounts so you can get in touch with the airline with one touch if things go awry.
Below that, you get a history of your own travels on the route you're flying, too. Being this was my first time on that specific line, it just showed my completed flight.
The newest feature of Flighty Pro that is extremely valuable is the Connections Assistant feature, which analyzes your connecting itineraries to let you know if you'll have enough time to make it.
For instance, this itinerary from Saint Kitts (SKB) to Minneapolis (MSP) had a connection in Miami (MIA) that Flighty thought could be risky. It labeled the connection “Tight.”
While we made our flight just fine, thanks to Global Entry at the exceptionally annoying MIA customs area, the app correctly labeled the connection as tight. It's not just based on time either because not all airports handle connecting customers the same.
The app explains its methodology and adjusts it based on the airport. For instance, I have a 3+ hour connection at Boston (BOS) coming up later this year that the app still deems risky!
As we mentioned above, Flighty is also available via a desktop app for Mac, which I use when I'm working at 30,000 feet or when I have my laptop out at the airport or lounge before my flight.
The Flighty app is beautifully designed and easy to use for any flyer.
My Other Favorite Features of Flighty Pro
I've spent a shocking amount of time on this app and have dug up some of my favorite ancillary features.
The first is having Flighty data on the lock screen of my iPhone. As part of the iPhone 14 iOS update a few years ago, you can add widgets to your home screen, and the new interface launched with Flighty as a primary option.
I whipped up this phone screen to show the possibilities. Underneath the time is the longer, horizontal Flighty widget and the small, circular one to its right (the one on the far right is just the weather).
I love having a countdown to my next flight on my lock screen. Having these on the lock screen is also nice because, on the day you fly, it'll show you gate information, on-time information, and once you land, baggage carousel information.
I also love having a Flighty app widget on my home screen. I have Flighty as a big button on the top left of my screen, along with all of my favorite apps.
Another feature I love is the Flighty Passport year-end roundup and the ability to see my all-time flight stats. You've likely seen Spotify Wrapped or other year-in-review-type content on people's social media, and Flighty does the same thing with Passport.
It gives you a map of all of your flights for the year, the number of flights, distance, flight time, airports, and different airlines you flew. It was a fun snapshot into a year in the skies, although it was slightly terrifying to see that I spent a full week in the air in 2022.
The most valuable parts of a Flighty Pro subscription are the push alerts. I find them helpful in many ways. Here is an example of some basic push alerts you get on the day you fly.
Usually, a day before your flight departs, you'll get a “flight plan filed” alert about your upcoming trip, which automatically loads most of the details on the app. You also get a 2-hour warning on the day of departure with some terminal and gate information.
But there's much more information you get alerted to with Flighty Pro. In addition to those basic updates, you can opt into all of these push alerts, including any and all delays, gate changes, aircraft changes, when your incoming plane arrives at the gate, what gate you'll be at when you arrive, and a 1-hour warning until landing, too.
This might be the most underrated aspect of Flighty and Flighty Pro: The app works on the basic, messaging Wi-Fi on planes. You know the normally free version of plane Wi-Fi that allows you to send text messages and WhatsApp messages while in the air? If you're connected to that, your Flighty app will partially update while you are in the sky.
Finally, a feature I've been utilizing more lately is the Friends' Flights tracking feature. On a list kept separate from your own flights, you can monitor other flights with all of the same Flighty Pro data, too.
I've found this extremely helpful in a number of ways. I love to use it when I have to pick up my friends and family from the airport, as it gives me a countdown until landing and their flight status through push alerts as they go. I've also used it to track friends and family who are flying to the same destination as me from other places or on other flights. It helps keep a traveling group together and informed.
Plus, the “Friends' Flights” feature doesn't affect your own flying stats, either. The flights are deleted from your data after the flight lands.
I know this review has been a love fest, but I have one gripe with the Flighty app.
When your flight number changes, the Flighty App processes the change as a cancelation of your flight, giving you the big, scary, red “Flight is canceled” banner on the app.
If you look for “Alternative Flights” on the app, you can usually see your flight is still operating, but with a new number and a new time, but it's still scary to get these big, red alerts telling you your trip might be in jeopardy even when it's not most of the time. Hopefully they can find a solution for this, but as of publication, it is still a problem.
Bottom Line
The Flighty app with Flighty Pro is my single favorite travel tool and is absolutely the most valuable resource to have in your pocket on the day you fly.
Flighty Pro subscriptions get you up-to-the-second push alerts and can help you see all the data you could possibly want about your upcoming or previous travels, all in one app.