Review: FlightTrack Pro

Overview

FlightTrack Pro is a great solution for getting detailed flight information in a hurry. While expensive ($9.99 at time of review), the App is fast, easy to use and the data it provides is accurate and detailed. Useful for a frequent flyer.

Features

Upon first opening FlightTrack Pro you are prompted to forward your flight confirmation e-mails to plans@tripit.com. This requires you to first sign up for a Tripit account if you don't already have one. Tripit is a free online travel planning site and the process of signing up takes all of five minutes using Mobile Safari or a computer. In testing, I used a computer. Once that's done, tons of information about your flight(s) are at your fingertips. Tripit integration is also one of the primary differences between FightTrack Pro and FlightTrack, the $4.99 base version. In FlighTrack, the flight numbers can only be entered manually. You can search by airline and flight number or by route. Either method works well and only takes seconds. FlightTrack also lacks certain airport details that FlightTrack Pro has, like local time, temperature, weather and delays. Forwarding a flight confirmation e-mail to Tripit works great.After sending the e-mail, I immediately moved over to FlightTrack Pro and the flight information was there, with plenty of pre-flight details. FlightTrack Pro is all about delivering flight information fast - flight number, gate and terminal numbers, scheduled as well as actual departure and arrival times and airport details. Once the flight begins, the app even delivers air speed, altitude, flight path and weather radar. This information, of course, is probably useless if you're actually boarding the flight, but for anyone picking up or dropping off a passenger it's extremely cool to see. During a friend's flight from New York to Los Angeles, I watched the plane make a detour over Texas because of a major storm. That definitely felt like one of those "couldn't do this without an iPhone" moments.

Breakdown

The Good: The data is available fast, it's accurate and the interface is easy to navigate. FlightTrack Pro is great for providing at-a-glance information about flights. The Bad: Like so many other apps, FlightTrack Pro suffers from iPhone 2.0's software limitations. If there's a delay, cancellation or other problem with your flight, there's no way for FlightTrack Pro to tell you unless you to go into the app. The main market for FlightTrack Pro is probably frequent flyers who encounter all manner of travel catastrophe. For them, FlightTrack Pro needs to be able to warn about problems. Push notifications coming in iPhone verison 3.0's summer release could be a potential solution. Lastly, Tripit account creation from the iPhone was not as quick a process as it should have been.

Developer Response

We contacted the developer and asked a couple of questions. Ben Kazez from Appropos Mobile informed us that they're working to improve the process of signing up for a Tripit account in future versions. However, Kazez would not comment about whether or not push notifications would be implemented in a future release. Appropos Mobile does state all upgrades to FlightTrack Pro will be free. Kazez also wanted to emphasize that both FlightTrack and FlightTrack Pro use the same data service, FlightStats. "We believe that the foundation of a flight tracker is its data, so we wouldn't compromise that for price," Kazez said.

Verdict

Notification of any flight changes or delays when the App is closed would probably justify the price tag and make this app useful to more than just the frequent flyer. As it stands though, FlightTrack Pro is a slick app that provides seamless synchronization with a Tripit account and detailed at-a-glance flight information.

Related articles