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


The My Flights app is an excellent way to keep track of your upcoming flights. It shows your name, frequent flyer number, ticket number, flight details, terminals, seats, any special meals and much more for each booking.

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.

Like planes? See my “Does anyone remember” series.
Flight reviews your thing? Mine are all indexed here.
Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Featured image by Rami Al Zayat via Unsplash.