How many airline apps do you have on your phone?

Considering people are creatures of habit, it’s interesting how many airline apps people have on their phones. I have seen some people online posting that they have had to sort theirs into folders as they have so many.

It boggles my mind, because most people stick to the same airlines that operate from their nearest airport. Therefore, I thought I’d pose the question to you and find out more.

How Often Do People Really Fly?

Aer Lingus released some data showing that in 2016, the average person in the Republic of Ireland took 6.79 flights. With a trip being considered two flights, they found 21% of people took one to two trips that year, 29% took three to four trips and 34% took five to ten trips.

That’s rather a lot of flying, but of course Ireland is an island, so you need to fly to get anywhere else. The very frequent flyers filled out the rest of the stats that year, with 11% taking 11-20 trips and 6% taking more than 21 trips, which would be 42 flights. Looking at my flight log, I took 34 flights that year but I used only four airlines to do it.

How Many Airline Apps Then?

Since I am always chasing frequent flyer status with British Airways, I try to stick to them as much as possible. It’s either BA or one of the members of the oneworld alliance, unless I absolutely have to go off piste and fly with someone else.

In my phone, I have the following ones installed. On the main screen, British Airways, American Airlines and Aer Lingus. The second page has Ryanair and the third page has the Aer Lingus AerClub app, Finnair and Qatar Airways. The latter two I’ve only added recently as I have upcoming trips with them.

Since I didn’t exit the womb with an iPhone in my hand, I have little use for airline apps before flying. All trip planning and so on is done on my laptop as it’s both much faster and the information is presented better.

The only time I use the apps are to check-in for a flight and get my mobile boarding pass. That’s pretty much it, as the airlines I use don’t have the whizz bang functionality of the US airlines that let you change your flights during disruptions and so on.

Overall Thoughts

Lots of companies have an app, and a lot of the time that was just jumping on the bandwagon. Airline apps are useful, but not as much as you might expect, in my opinion anyway.

Once my flying with Finnair and Qatar Airways is complete, I’ll delete their apps as I have no reason to have them on my phone doing nothing. I tend to be good at digital housekeeping like that, though I know I am an outlier on that.

So, what about you? How many airline apps do you have on your phone? Which airlines? Do you use them all or are some there just because you’ve forgotten to delete them? Are you using them for bookings and so on or just for check-in? I’d be interested in your views. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Stanislav Doronenko via Wikimedia Commons.
Aer Lingus by Anna Zvereva via Wikimedia Commons.