TripAlert: Does it work?
 

I've been signed up for TripAlert for quite a while, and I've found it to be erratic at best. It gives me my email for about half my flights, and it seems to be a one-time deal -- once it pages, it never pages again for that flight, even if there are delays or changes.

With AA, flight paging gives me an email every time there is even a minor change (e.g., 5 minute change, or even a gate change). In fact, when getting delayed in O'Hare, I even knew about the delay a minute or two before the airport monitors updated.

Anyone else think TripAlert is in need of improvement?

I wholeheartedly agree. AA's Flight Staus Notification is second to none. I have even gotten gate change information from AA.com before the GA's have gotten it. I fly CO weekly and never get a second page re: gate changes, delays, etc. beyond the first notification. Very disappointing.

Come to think of it, I really haven't had Trip Alert work correctly in awhile.

Nope
 

While it's OK at announcing the gate location for on-time departures, it's horrible when something impacts the departure time. Rather than sending me useless reminders to use e-Check-In, the technical gurus at CO should focus on sending out alerts about real-time issues around real delays.

It's just bad... basically useless. Whenever I have received an email alert to my Blackberry, I've almost always already been at the airport. Perfect example was a flight in December. The weather was bad but I checked the flights before I left my home and it said on schedule. I show up at the airport and it says on schedule. From the time I walked from security to the gate, they changed it from 6:55pm to 8:45pm. I recevied the email on my way to the gate. It turned out that the plane we were waiting on hadn't even left Akron yet!! A Trip Alert really would have saved me there.

On another recent trip while in Miami, I actually received an alert in plenty of time... a few hours in advance saying my flight was delayed by about 2 hours. It worked out well for me since I still had work that I could do. The only problem was I received subsequent alerts moving the departure up about an hour and then a second one saying it was back to my originally scheduled time. Luckily there was another flight about 1.5 hours later and I got a seat up front and had time to eat. It worked out well, but still frustrating.

I have TripAlert send me text messages to my cell phone - for my 8-segment run this past weekend, it worked perfectly fine for everything except my IAH connections. At IAH, there always seems to be a gate change! My boarding pass from DFW said E5 for my IAH-SFO flights, and the Pres Club person suggested that I check again when I get to IAH - at IAH, upon deplaning, I turned on my phone & saw the text message that said the gate was E3 - I asked the gate agent when I got off & she reconfirmed that I was going to E3 - coming off of a COEX flight, I had to take the tram & run to E3 (about a 30 minute connection since my DFW-IAH flight was late) - when I got to E3, they said it had been changed to C37 - so I had to run there & got there about a minute before the scheduled departure time. They let me on the plane because that IAH-SFO flight was delayed due to late luggage & the fact that they forgot to board oxygen for a passenger who needed it to fly.

It would be nice if they sent out updates with the correct information & if changes occured automatically had a system in place where it sends you text messages with the updates.

Do they ever send alerts for gate changes?

There have been at least a couple times where I do OLCI and go by the gate on that BP. Each time, the original gate listed was 126 or 127. I get there only to find that the correct gate is something like 88 or 95 or something... totall opposite end of the terminal. I know it's my own stupidity for not looking at the departure boards in the airport, but an email letting me know the change would be great.

I have had trip-alert work well with gate changes and info on delayed flight and then there have been times that it does not work at all.

DL flight notification system worked very well and in fact informed me about a delay before the GA knew about it.

Dan

It's working great NOW!
 

This morning, I received a trip alert at 08h00 ET that the 18h20 FLL-IAH is delayed by over an hour (which would cause me to misconnect). Called Elite desk and they 1) gave me a complete explanation of the delay and 2) very quickly put me on the next earlier flight @ 14h55. Of course, I was assigned a worse seat :( but it's better than getting to the airport this afternoon with no options to my final destination. So yes, Trip Alert is working great! ^ ^ ^

wendy

I've found it to be erratic. Latley I've been getting both the voice and the text messages. The voice calls come earlier by a few minutes. I got messages to remind to check-in and also for flight delays (and in one case a follow-on 'un-delay'). However, my experience has not always been so good.

For the record, CO's software actually automatically protects you on another flight if you look like you're going to misconnect. So while the Elite line acts like they're booking you there, it's probably already in the record and they're just confirming it.

But it definitely seems to be working a bit better. It's not as sensitive as say AA's which pages you after any detail change, but if it's a substantial delay, it keeps pushing out updates.

Bump.

While setting up a NW flight for alerts today, I noticed that NW's Flight Status Notification service allows you to set it for partner flihgts, including CO.

Since most of us have written off TripAlert as a loss, I'm wondering has anyone tried using NW's notification system for CO's flights? I'd be curious to hear if it works better than CO's own system. I won't be on a CO bird for about a month, so I can't try it myself yet.

I too have found it to be erratic. I'm notified about 50% of time when there are delays on my flights. Thanksgiving eve on my flight back to EWR from IAD I was notified about 9 times of flight changes, yet the week prior on Friday my flight was delayed 1 hour yet I received no notification of this.

I find trip alert to be ultra frustrating. Its such a poorly implemented piece of technology. For at least a year I would get txt messages with my connecting gate information at IAH, CLE and EWR. Now I get one 2 hours before my flight leaves. Nothing else. Just think of all the dollars they could save reducing the numbers of "agent(s) who will meet you at the gate with connecting flight information" if this thing actually worked. The fact that people have conflicting experiences with it just reinforces my belief that this is an implementation problem. Maybe its cell providers, who knows, but its been around long enough it should work properly by now.

I've found it to be pretty reliable at CO, although I can't recall if I get gate changes. I know that I do at AA.
But the one big advantage of CO vs. AA is that CO you just set your preference for ALL trip alerts, on AA.com you have to sign up for each individual flight you want (though it usually only takes a few clicks).

And be glad we're not flying US, last I checked (May) there was NO trip alert functionality. YX doesn't have it either. Had to call the stupid phone line!