From WebOSAppReview
[edit] Flightview
| Developed By | FlightView |
|---|---|
| Current Version | 0.9.17 |
[edit] Description
Real-time flight information you can act on. Track upcoming and in-air flights. Use the in-air map to see a flight's progress. Save flights to "My Flights" and get notifications when flight status changes - even when the app is closed. Use notes to add car reservation or other information associated with a flight. The app integrates with your Palm calendar, putting travel information in the palm of your hand. This version tracks flights in North America, or with 1 end point in North America.
[edit] Review
Flightview is developed by Flightview Inc., the recognized leader in providing the most accurate, real-time flight information solutions for the aviation and travel industry. When considering an application to track airline flights, the number one concern in my mind is how accurate the data is. It doesn’t matter if you manage to develop a sleek, easy to use application if you have inaccurate or old flight data. Luckily this is not a problem with the Flightview app. Flightview uses custom built technology to pull information from a variety of sources such as the FAA, airlines, airports, and even weather providers. It then intelligently aggregates this data, so that it may be easily consumed by the Palm Pre app.
Starting up the application gives you 3 main options: ‘Track a Flight’, ‘Track Sample Flight’, and ‘Manage My Flights’. Selecting ‘Track a Flight’ gives you the option to track by flight code or route. Flight Code requires you to enter the departure date (which defaults to today), Airline Code, and flight number. I really like how they handled the airline code input. If you know the code, you may simply type in the 2 characters. Otherwise, you may click the ‘Aireline’ button to pull up a full list of airlines to select from. In typical webos fashion, you can simply start typing while on this screen to search the airlines by name. Fantastic.
Searching by Route allows you to enter the departing airport, arrival airport, airline code (optional), and date/time. Again we get the great interface for airport airports: type the airport code, or click the departing/arriving button to search for airlines by city. The date/time default to ‘Today’ and ‘Any’ time, but these can be changed if needed.
Regardless of how you choose to search, you end up with a nice list of flights to select. Plenty of information is displayed immediately, including the estimated departure and arrival times. When you find the flight you are looking for, click it to view additional information. Here you may see all information related to the flight. Flightview really has you covered, as you see scheduled times for takeoff/landing as well as actual takeoff/landing times. If the flight is in progress you can see how much time is remaining on the flight, the gate it is landing at, and even an overhead map depicting the flight path, and how far along the path the plane currently is!
There is also a plus icon in the buttom left corner, which will add this flight to your ‘My Flights’ menu, and immediately show you this menu as well. The ‘My Flights’ feature allows you to keep track of multiple flights without having to search for them each time you open the application. Clicking on a flight from this menu will pull up the flight details again, but will also give you the option to take notes, receive alerts about the flight, and add the flight to your calendar.
Notes are a great place to store things like hotel or rental car information that will come in handy while traveling. Enabling alerts will provide you with popup notifications about the flight, so you are always on top of things. Finally, you may add or remove a flight from your calendar, which works very smoothly. The flight is added in a ‘Flightview’ calendar, in the correct time block, and with the location being the departing airport. In the notes of the calendar event is the Airline and flight information.
The final task would be to remove old flights from you list. Opening the program back up, you can click on ‘Manage My Flights’ then do the WebOS “slide-to-the-side” gesture to delete the list item. If you want to try all this stuff out, or showoff the app to your friend, you can click the ‘Track a sample flight’ button to be shown a random flight that is currently in the air.
Flightview has really pulled out all the stops here and created a fantastic application. It is highly useful, easy to use/navigate, and has all the options I need. The addition of the ‘Sample Flight’ seemed a little odd at first, but really is a great idea. It makes it very easy to play with the app to discover its features, and figure out if you want to use it or not before you are actually traveling. It is also makes it simple to show off the app to friends, and honestly, we all love to do that :)
The only oddity I could find with Flightview is the Greyed out ‘Preferences’ item in the top left dropdown menu. I’m not sure what the point of adding it now is, when it is always greyed out. Surely a sign of things to come in the future, but strange that they didn’t just remove the item until they had a use for it.
Flightview has said that while the application is in beta it is free, but they plan on charging a nominal fee once the full version is available. I’d definitely suggest trying out the app while it is free. If you travel much at all, I’m guessing you will it worth paying for the commercial version, as long as the price point isn’t ridiculous.