Since the advent of the smart phone, people have created apps to take care of just about everything. From spreadsheets to photos to social media to games, the coverage is vast. Due to the fact there are a plethora of apps to choose from, how do you know which apps are useful and which are useless? Here is one I recently came across that I think is vital to add to any frequent flyers arsenal of tools.
My Flights App
If your airline uses the Amadeus computer reservations system, you can enter your booking reference and surname and it will then have your booking saved in the app. For airlines that don’t use Amadeus, you can enter flights manually. While that is all well and good, what is the benefit of doing this?
An Impressive Feature
Where the app really comes into its own is when there are changes to your flights. Any change to an Amadeus booking – changes in schedule, seating, aircraft type – will result in the app sending you a push notification that your booking has changed. This comes in handy especially when flight times change as you are notified straight to your phone. There is a little video here that shows how it all works.
For example, during times of weather disruption you will know very fast of any change and can contact your airline ahead of the hoards to make any changes you may need. Some airlines don’t notify you of changes by e-mail, so this is often the only way you find out apart from manually checking your booking on a regular basis.
Limitations
Interestingly, My Flights is available for iOS devices only. If you have an iPhone or iPad you’re fine however if you have an Android device you’re out of luck. Or are you? Happily the My Flights web site has a web version you can use. That nicely covers the Android issue.
Carriers that don’t use Amadeus is the other issue which means if you fly with certain airlines regularly the app won’t notify you of changes. Happily many quality airlines around the world use Amadeus so the chances are high your airline is on the list. There is a list of airlines on Wikipedia you should check out to see if your airline is there.
Overall Thoughts
My life was transformed when I downloaded this app a few months ago. As a oneworld alliance flyer the app is great as many of their airlines use Amadeus. Not too long after I started using My Flights, a certain airline began a batch of schedule changes on one of my bookings and they never notified me of any of them at all.
The notifications via My Flights saved me finding out randomly through Manage My Booking and resulted in me contacting the airline to make a change to a flight several months before flight time. It really is a life saver, so I highly recommend giving it a go. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Rami Al Zayat via Unsplash.
A good app indeed whose limitation to Amadeus bookings only is unfortunate.
Yes, I’ve often wondered why that’s the case. You would think it would be simple enough to tie in to other GDS systems but perhaps it’s not. Thanks for the comment!
I don’t really agree. Google does a better job because they organize your trip chronologically and inform you of the next flight you need to be focused on. They too will have all your flight info, reservation #, gate info and time changes in addition to weather and transportation handling. And it applies to hotel reservations too. Plus, there is nothing to install nor input. They extract it all from your email. You can see this info either in Google now cards, Gmail or if you want Google trips app but I prefer to have as few apps as possible.
Well, that’s certainly interesting! I will have to have a look and try out the Google option, won’t I? It sure sounds pretty cool. Thanks for the heads up and the comment!
So it doesn’t work with AA.. great.
Yeah, that’s definitely a shame as AA is one airline you’d really like to have on it to be fair. Thanks for the comment!