Flighty App Review: What You Need To Know About the Flight Tracking App

In 2023, I flew 91,706 miles—nearly four times around the globe—and navigated exactly 40 airports, some no larger than the size of a high school gymnasium and others that are world-class aviation mega-hubs. And, perhaps like any other modern air traveler, I lost 25 hours of my life from delays, whether that meant sitting on the tarmac or, on the contrary, lingering at the airport lounge a bit longer.

How do I keep track of all of this travel information? Enter Flighty, a flight-tracking app that boasts “powerful, pilot-grade data” to elevate your travel game. 

The user-friendly app, available exclusively on Apple iOS at this time, allows you to keep an extra-close watch on all of your flights in one simple dashboard. You can use Flighty to keep tabs on your upcoming flights and enter important details, such as seat assignments and confirmation codes. Or, you can use it as a travel log, by entering previous flights you’ve taken.

Gone are the days of fumbling for paper boarding passes and sprinting across the terminal to find the latest updates on the departures board. Flighty helps you stay on top of your flight details when you’re faced with the inevitable gate change, delay, or even aircraft swap (if you want to get down to the nitty gritty). 

Flighty offers a free and paid version for members. Here are the specifics of Flighty’s features and how you can make the most of this handy app.

What is Flighty?

Flighty is a mobile app with the power to revolutionize your travel game. It was launched in 2019 by Austin-based developer Ryan Jones. Unfortunately for Android users, Flighty was designed for (and is still only available for) Apple iOS at this time. 

The app has a colorful yet intuitive interface that displays real-time flight details, such as delays, often long before airlines communicate them to you. By enabling push notifications, you can stay apprised of flight updates as early as possible. 

Flighty acts as both a travel planner and a travel log, allowing you to load your previous and future flights onto the app with flight numbers and booking references. All information gets stored within the app, including flight details, departure times, gate changes, and more. 

Pros: Why we love Flighty 

• Stay informed with real-time updates: You’ll want to enable push notifications to know as early as possible if an airline has filed for a delay, cancellation, or changed your gate. Flighty provides accurate information by monitoring your inbound aircraft 25 hours before departure and has direct FAA access to notify you of any airspace delays. 
• Polished interface that streamlines your upcoming flights: Flighty provides a comprehensive scope of flight details, from distance traveled to baggage claim information. Say you fly American one week and Air France the next—you can easily see all of those flight breakdowns in one seamless dashboard.
• See how far you’ve traveled over time: Think Spotify Wrapped but for air travel. Every year, the app issues a “Flighty Passport” that shows where you’ve been and how far you’ve traveled—even details like how many hours you spent stuck in delays.

Cons: Limitations of Flighty 

• Not available on Android devices: Flighty is exclusively an Apple app available for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Luckily for Apple users, it’s integrated with uniquely iOS features, like Live Activities and Dynamic Island. 
• Flighty Pro is relatively expensive: The advanced version of the app costs $47.99 per year (with the Annual Savings Flighty Pro membership). While the free version of the app allows you to track unlimited flights, you won’t get push notifications or access to all of the in-depth features offered by the paid version. 
• No compatibility with individual airline apps: The app currently does not offer integrations with any airlines. You can sync your flights with the TripIt app if you’re a Flighty Pro user; otherwise, users will need to add flights manually.

What is Flighty Pro?

Flighty Pro is the paid version of the app, which gives you access to the full scope of details about your flights. Frequent travelers who want to use Flighty to stay up-to-date on their flight information—or want to use Flighty as a travel log—will want to pay $47.99 per year for the Pro version. 

Not sure if it’s worth the cost? Here’s a breakdown of what you get from the free version of Flighty vs. Flighty Pro.    

Flighty (free) features

The app is free to use for travelers who want a simple way to keep track of flights in one place. Here are the features you can expect from the free version of Flighty: 

• Tracking for unlimited flights, with real-time flight data, previous flight route information, weather, and aircraft details
• List of previous flights and the routes you’ve traveled with a personal flight log and map (free members can only see flight data from the past 12 months) 
• Online and offline capabilities across all devices 

Flighty Pro features

Flighty Pro comes with all of the features of the free version (with no 12-month limit on historical flight data), plus:

• Push notifications for airport and inbound aircraft delays
• Real-time data of estimated taxi, take off, landing, and arrival times
• iOS integrations with Live Activities and Dynamic Island
• Email and TripIt integrations to make uploading your upcoming flights easier 

There are a few membership options, including weekly, monthly, and annual plans. 

How to use Flighty to track your flight information

The homepage of the Flighty app shows “My Flights.” This is where all of your upcoming flights are stored and sorted by the earliest travel date. 

There are three ways that you can add a new flight to your Flighty app. 

• Manual search
• Forward an email itinerary 
• Sync with TripIt

Manual search

To add a new flight manually, tap the “Search to add flights” bar to look up flights by flight number or auto-import from your Apple Calendar app. (If you can’t locate your flight number, no problem; you can input the outbound and inbound airports and departure date to see all of the airlines offering flights on that day.)  

Forward an email itinerary

If you are a Flighty Pro user, you can also add flights by forwarding your email itinerary to Flighty with the following steps:

• Head to “Settings” in your Flighty app
• Click “Add Flights to Email”
• Enter your email address (and verify within your inbox)
• Start forwarding all future flight confirmation emails to [email protected] 

It takes just a few minutes for the itinerary to populate in your main dashboard. (Some users have reported that this feature may not work as seamlessly if you’re flying with a smaller airline or if the confirmation email isn’t easy for the software to read, in which case you might want to add the flight information manually.)  

Sync with TripIt

Flighty Pro users can also sync their app with TripIt, a popular trip-planning app, so their Flighty app automatically updates with new flight information from TripIt. You’ll need to visit “Settings” then “TripIt Sync” to automatically connect all past and future flights from TripIt.  

Flighty features 

Once you add a flight, it will populate in the “My Flights” section. You can click on the individual flight to see basic information, including the flight route, flight number, flight time and distance, and scheduled times. 

Scroll down, and you’ll see more in-depth information about your flight. Note that some of these features are only available for Flighty Pro users.

Booking code and seat number

Each tracked flight has two customizable features: booking code and seat number. The booking code attached to your flight lets you keep the information on hand rather than fumbling through your email. The seat number is a fun tidbit, allowing you to indicate whether it is an aisle, middle, or window seat (or jumpseat, pilot, or captain!), as well as the fare class of the flight—here’s hoping you’re flying fancy in first class.

Good to know

This box informs travelers about any time-zone changes in your departure and arrival cities. (This comes in particularly handy around Daylight Savings Time.) 

Arrival forecast

The “Arrival forecast” box lets you know how the particular route performed over the past 60 days. Flighty tracks millions of flights every day, so they use this information to help inform travelers of whether they’re likely to arrive early, on time, or late on a given flight.

You can find at what percentage the flight was early, on time, or late (even dreadfully late, at 45+ minutes past due). You can also see if the route was canceled or diverted.

Aircraft information

This is for all the AvGeeks out there: Once an aircraft has been assigned to your route, you’ll also get to see how old the plane is, its tail number, and other general information like cruising speed and range. 

The “Aircraft information” section is something you can watch for on aircraft swaps, as it could potentially mean you get a newer (or older) cabin interior once onboard. And if you’re trying to see if you’ll be on a certain aircraft—like, say, a Boeing 737 MAX-9—this will tell you everything you need to know.

Detailed timetable 

The “Detailed timetable” is broken down into three sections: Depart, Arrive, and Totals. Each section presents the scheduled vs. actual time, which will start to populate, of course, once your flight is on the move. If the time is in green, that means your flight was early or on schedule, while red indicates that the flight was late. Under Total, you’ll find the air time vs. the total time, which takes into account any taxi time and gate arrival.

Airline contact information

Did Flighty notify you of a two-hour delay before the airline actually did? That’s happened to me more times than I can count. If you’re flying on a route with alternative options, you can call the airline before any other traveler to work out an optimal itinerary. 

In this section, Flighty helps connect you to the airline’s phone number, Twitter (X), website, and Facebook in just a few taps. 

My history on this route

This section keeps a tally of all the flights you’ve taken on that route (even if it was on different airlines). You can also see details like cumulative flight time and distance on that route. Work commuters will find this section particularly insightful, whether you’re tallying up work trips or want to find out which airline had the most delays on your most-traveled routes. 

Where’s my plane? (Flighty Pro only)

This is my personal favorite feature that makes Flighty Pro worth the cost. This information won’t populate until an aircraft tail number has been assigned to the route, but once it is, you’ll be the first to know where your plane has come from and where it’s heading next.  

Every aircraft follows a schedule, sometimes upwards of 8–10 flights per day. Of course, things don’t always go as planned, so you’ll be able to see how early (or late) your aircraft arrived on its assigned route with the “Where’s my plane?” feature.  

In fact, the makers of Flighty say that “the #1 cause of delays is a late inbound aircraft.” In some cases, though not always, if your inbound aircraft is scheduled to arrive 30 minutes late, it’s possible that your own flight will be delayed, which can help you plan accordingly. 

Updates (Flighty Pro only)

Flighty uses FlightAware (another major flight tracker) to make predictions about your flight. The data provides an estimated time of arrival based on industry taxi and runway data. 

Where is Flighty available? 

Flighty is available exclusively on Apple products, including iPhones, iPads, and Mac desktop apps. The app works in offline mode even if you’re not connected to data or wifi, but any new flight updates will be estimates until you are back online. 

Pro tips for making the most of Flighty

The Flighty app is one of the most indispensable travel tools I’ve got on my phone today, and I’m soon approaching my third year of paid membership. Here are some extra tips from this Flighty Pro pro user. 

Flighty Friends: It’s like Find My Friends but for travel

The Find My Friends app is a way for Apple users to track their close friends or family members (perhaps too often at times). In 2023, Flighty introduced “Flighty Friends,” which allows you to add other Flighty users to your network and see their upcoming flights—and vice versa. 

This feature can be particularly useful so you don’t leave too early when picking up a loved one from the airport or if you’re planning a group trip and want to keep tabs on everyone’s flights. However, you may want to reserve this feature for your closest friends and family members, as you’ll be notified anytime someone adds a new flight or is traveling that day. 

If you’re bombarded by alerts, you can customize it to reduce the number of push notifications about their flights. You can remove Flighty Friends at any time or even revoke flight-sharing ability with certain users. 

Customize your widgets

Customize the Flighty app to your every need by visiting the “Extensions” section under “Settings.”

Here, you’ll find a few iOS integrations that can help make your travel life a lot easier:

• Your upcoming flight can live on your phone’s Dynamic Island (a widget that displays your flight details that you can put on your home screen) and Live Activities (a feature that gives you real-time notifications about your flight on travel day). 
• Lock screen widgets allow you to get quick, need-to-know flight information; during your flight, you’ll also see a progress bar.
• A home screen widget displays a countdown to your next flight or a display of personalized travel statistics.
• You can download the Flighty app for Apple Watch, which allows you to see flight information, live status (and delays), and more from your wrist.

Check out Flighty Passport 

Rather than collecting paper boarding passes, I now keep a historical log of all of my flights on my phone instead (and clean up all of that clutter). You can manually import previous flights to see how many flights you’ve flown year after year, along with some other interesting insights. 

For instance, I learned that my most flown aircraft in 2023 was the not-so-exciting Bombardier CRJ900, when I flew between New York and Raleigh nearly a dozen times. I also learned that my beloved airline, Delta Air Lines, was also my top offender for the most delays. 

Integrate TripIt 

TripIt is another popular travel planner, but it goes one step above Flighty by managing your entire itinerary, from flights to hotels and activities. While TripIt does have flight-tracking capabilities on its own, it does not provide the breadth of information that Flighty offers. 

Therefore, TripIt users can leverage its partnership with Flighty to sync all of their flights with the Flighty app to get access to the app’s tech-friendly features. Then, they can go onto TripIt to map out the rest of their trip.

Save with a family or lifetime membership 

You can get access to a lifetime version of Flighty for $249 (the cost of roughly five annual memberships). In my opinion, this would have been worth the investment had I known back then that I’d love the app as much as I do today. 

New users of Flighty will get all of the Pro features on their first-tracked flight. If you’d rather test out Flighty before committing to an annual or lifetime membership, you can pay for weekly ($3.99) or monthly ($5.99) subscriptions first. 

Another way to save is with a family membership integrated with Apple’s Family Plans, which allows up to six family members to get Flighty for $89.99 per year (or the price of two individual plans). 

Summary

Flighty revolutionizes the travel experience by empowering members to always be in-the-know about their travel plans. The app is able to predict disruptions to your flight with real-time updates by tracking your inbound aircraft in the days, hours, and even minutes leading up to travel. The paid membership may be well worth the extra cost for your peace of mind when you’re on the ground (or in the air).