lsquare

Skyboy2006

flightyryan

YES! We are onto something if FT pro flyers like it. We often hear Flighty replaces 2-4 apps. Thank you for the support, and calling us good app developers - we strive to "do things right".

Hm, I haven't heard very often that Delta beat us. They do have the best app tech stack, but still we need to beat them. If that continues I'd love to hear it.

100%. I was actually slightly guarded and purposefully vague (which is rare for me!) when posting "what users really care about". As you said, users obviously care about the end value, not tail numbers. It's what we DO with the tail numbers, and that's the part I was guarding . More coming soon on that.

Are you getting our connection alerts? It's the first part of exactly what you wanted. Example below.

Just to be clear, I obviously did NOT mean it to diss customers. Thank you kindly for the benefit of the doubt.

What I tried to articulate was: The solutions users offer to problems is typically a basic solution, whereas we are trying to deliver "awesome" solutions. So from that standpoint, I was surprised more "awesome" solutions/ideas/request weren't coming from users - *especially* because flying is SO complex and problem ridden and flight nerds are so ingrained and typically smart, I was expected HUGE asks from users.

You offer a stellar example above: Layover times. Most feedback has said: add the layover time (faster horse), when we should really be working on layover time + real-time transfer time + map navigation (Model T).

As to feedback: We purposefully don't send those "we received your email and someone will reply" things. And I'm doing basically all the customer support and as far as I know I have no missed a single tweet or email. Did I miss yours somewhere?

Super glad you like it, keep the feedback coming!

Tweets:

lsquare

I just want to post an update about my experience with Flighty. I've flown AC548 and CX865 since I got the trial.

I think I made a mistake when I installed Flighty. Apparently no notifications were given until I toggle the sliders. Other than that, the information that I got for AC548 seemed to be accurate. No issues there.

CX865 was when things didn't go as I had expected. My experience with CX865 hasn't been very good lately. In July, I think my flight was delayed about 30 minutes and I didn't get any notifications from CX until I already arrived at JFK. I experienced something similar last week (August 9th). I got an email notification from CX in the afternoon that everything was going according to plan and that my flight out of JFK at 21:50 would be ok. When I checked-in at the airport, the front desk rep said everything was ok. I got notifications from Flighty throughout the day. One of the notifications even stated that the aircraft would change, but only to get another notification later that the airplane type would be back to the original B777. I forgot the name of the variant. Then at about 21:10 local time in New York, I got an email from CX that the flight would be delayed until 22:15. I was at Bobby Van's eating when that email got to my inbox. I got no such notification from Flighty. I loaded up the app and all indications that everything was normal. I Googled CX865 and Google was now showing the flight have been delayed. It wasn't until about 21:30 that I got a notification from Flighty that the flight was delayed.

@flightyryan Any comments?

Cascades42

I tried the app for two weeks and really liked it, but I'm not sure I fly enough for it to be worth $50/year. Have the flighty team considered offering "packs" of flights? E.g. I could purchase 10 flights and the next 10 flights I track with it use up that credit. This might be more palatable for people who don't travel a lot

BKft

I've used the pro version the past week. Had some delays, cancellations etc - not good for travel, but a solid thing for testing a travel application. Here are some of my comments, I have included photos as well, as there are some bugs I came across. The version I have tested was 1.0.3 (185) on iphone X 12.3.1.

Pros and cons:

+ very nice graphical user interface
+ easy to add flights
+ push notifications for every aspect of the trip

- airplane data missing for some flights (causing not only lack of current data, but you cannot track where the airplane is/was just prior
- some functionality bugs; as detailed below
- price (I see the price a bit to high, especially in the case where I still needed to use other apps/web sites together with Flighty for the "full picture"
- missing XML import (of past flights from other sites/apps, such as my.flightradar24.com in my case)


Discrepancy in data accuracy

Flighty says the flight is OK:




Google says at the same time that the flight is delayed (and it was delayed):




Missing information

One of the focus points of Flighty should be to replace a number of other travel apps. Here it doesn't show any airplane data for the flight in question:




At the same time, Flightradar has at least some of the data:



I was reboked over MUC, and then at the time of MUC-SFO was preparing to takeoff, the application still didn't have any info on the A340 I was in:





Push notifications

I liked the airport status push notifications; the app gives info on the current status of the general airport delays:




Push notifications overall seemed the most active in the domestic USA flight (SFO-LAS) - for these flights, Flighty had all the data and was able to provide information such as where the aircraft is before it becomes my flight.





Negative time

In some cases, probably depending on the internet connection/change of timezones, the times are shown with a negative sign. I understand the "basic computer logic" of doing this, but the user interface would look much nicer without the "negative timings".





My flight log bug

My flight log looks great, but it has a bug. When i open the "My flight log" and tap on any past flight, the app shows info on it. When I tap X to close that flight and would like to open another previous flight, the scrolling doesn't work.

Here is a video of the behaviour:
https://app.box.com/s/m8dppp4p9bnu8y6pe2o9o101m0lrhxbh

lsquare

I also experienced something similar to you last week in New York. I'm hoping @flightyryan can look into this and fix it to make Flighty app more reliable. I'm not sure I'll be able to test this again because my upcoming flights have been quite reliable in the past. I knew CX865 from JFK-YVR would be a good test because of its history of delayed departures out of JFK. I think even Flighty mentioned something about the flight being late at least 56% of the time.

I can't wait until @flightryan and his team make the implementations to the app that will make it on par with my.FlightRadar.

flightyryan

Let me recap, to make sure I get it, then troubleshoot:
1. You installed Flighty but forgot to turn on Notifications. OK, good to know, maybe we can make that more clear.
2. Then you are saying CX flights have been a mess since July.
3. Flighty correctly told you a tail number change and a plane type change.
4. CX865 was delayed and CX and Google had it, Flighty was 20 minutes late.

OK, so a couple things. First sorry for the late reply, I meant to reply for 2 days. Next, let me point you to "Record of Changes" are at the bottom of every flight in Flighty and report every single tiny little change, not like other sites that only show changes >=15m changes, we list every drop. So, you can *always* see what time Flighty knew about X event. Next, due to our strict privacy, there's really not much I can look into so far... like what should I look up to investigate this? I don't know the flight date or your UserID. I think this might be a recurring them on the board, so allow me to say:

*To diagnosis an issue, I need a bug report via "Report an Issue" in the app – including flight numbes, date, and what happened. Exactly like the info you provided above would be stellar. That report includes your private random UserID, and a diagnostic log from the app, without that, there's no much we can look up.*

I'm not meaning to point this a lsquare at all, just a general PSA, that is my fault for not saying earlier. As to your issue exactly, I've never heard of CX issues, this is literally the first, but my eyes are peeled now, and if you send me that bug report we can look!

flightyryan

I'll be totally honest - we don't have any plans to do packs right now. If you'll notice, I'm not aware of any flight tracking app that does packs. In short: it creates an engineering and customer support mess, and we need to nail our core market of frequent flyers first. Maybe in the future, but right now we encourage users to use the free forever plan, and then activate Pro Monthly for the month they travel.

flightyryan

WOW. What a report. This is suuuuper helpful, comprehensive, and generous of your time BKft - thank you. Also, I come with ultimately very good news - I know what happened in each of these, and we started documenting and working on the big ones last week.
1. BA849 (AA6775) - you gave Google the operating airline btw We identified a rare BA issue right after launch, that never showed up in our 1.5 year beta test. Notice how Google says their source is FlightStats - they are one of our providers, so this is a fix we are working on and shouldn't happen again.
2. Same for the tail number - BA bug
3. Did any app have the tail number of LH 458 on 8/5 at that time? It's in Flighty now with all the info, did you notice when that was?
4. Glad you like the OIS alerts!
5. Negative time - I haven't seen that one in a while! We worked on negative times for a month in beta. Timezones are hhhhhhard. The app says Offline mode, but you clearly have a connection, I'm guessing it righted itself about 10 seconds later? This is a background refresh issue that is currently fixed and being tested in beta!
6. Flight Log - Ahh, I see, when you have the card at the lowest position, we reset the scroll. You are 100% right, first time I've seen that, but I know what's happening.

In summary, we have a BA issue we started working on (it's a data issue, so lots of phone calls with big co's involved), we aren't sure about the LH 458 tail number, I'm pretty sure I know the negative time issue but please correct me if not, and the flight log scrolling we'll get fixed for you. We are 3 weeks old, still catching some stuff!

Thanks again, incredible report, really. I'd love to know about LH 458. ��

EDIT: Forgot to address import. Right now it's not a top priority, future flights are, but you folks are pretty enthused about it and we are taking note. Right now, using TripIt as a middle man is the easiest way.

I love how you kept mentioning that our value prop is replacing many apps. I think it is too, and it's part of our magic, that you don't have to flip between 3-5 apps WHEN IT'S WORKING! It has to work, for that to be true, and it just flat out did not for you, very sorry about that, and working on all issues. I love that our challenge is so broad, we're taking the main reason you use app X, Y, and Z; putting them into one app, and making it way easier to use, and automating many parts of it. It's a hell of a challenge but those are the ones worth doing!

Pseudo Nim

immaculate

I re-read my post and I guess it wasn't clear - what I meant to say is that recurring subscription charges are popular for startups these days so that they (the startup) can show monthly recurring revenue and "profits" to investors, NOT that this pricing model is necessarily popular/desirable for end-users like myself. (e.g. Dark Sky charging a 1-time fee for the app + functionality on the iOS store vs moving to a monthly recurring subscription charge for Android users has resulted in man frustrated users) That being said, good luck with the model and app and I hope it works out for you guys

I was really excited at the prospect of plentiful flight data and liked your UI when I tried the app. I thought that the push updates were good (4-6 flights per week to/from SFO where delays are common), but between the official airline apps for the 2 airlines I fly and TripIt Pro, I just didn't see the value add that would justify the annual price.

BThumme

For what its worth, I just went back 7 years, I was able to find some of my tail numbers through this app (looking at you, UA38 EWR-OSL on 12-25-2012). A lot of the flights still say waiting for tail number, so I'm going to guess the data isn't there (my earliest flight I need a tail for is UA3629 GRR-ORD on 4-10-2012), and a bunch of my old dash 8 flights (like FNT-CLE on 12-25-2012). Still though, I know what I'll be doing this weekend. I was happy to see that the app had no problems picking up (RIP) US Airways Flights.

I'm hoping the app will stay at the reduced price for about another two weeks, which is when I plan to grab it for a year. But also another vote for a lifetime subscription @flightyryan.

flightyryan

Are some missing? Tell me which. We want them to pull auto not build a manual way for you

flightyryan

That's why most startups use it. But we are bootstrapped, with my own money, and have zero plans to invest or sell. We do subscriptions because it's how OUR costs work. That's how we buy data from alllll the providers, so that's how we bill. *For right now* if Flighty is not worth $4/month for you, then we must focus on the users that it IS worth that for. We do this because at 1-2 trips per month that means $1-2 per flight, which is what we would charge anyway for "packs". So for your "core" users, it's better value, less work for the user, less work for us, our incentives are aligned, and we can buy more data and work on improving the app in confidence.

Maybe that's too candid to a fault, but that's just me, and the honest to god truth. Sure, we may do packs way down the road.

Everyone uses Dark Sky as an example . My first app was Weather Line, before joining Apple, and then leaving to do Flighty and Weather Line 2. I was the first 3 apps to use Dark Sky's data and I know John and Adam well. Here's the thing... Dark Sky iOS app is marketing for their weather data. It's not a business. It's a marketing cost. That's why when they made Android it's subs! By my estimates, they make $1M per year revenue off the iOS app and $20M++ off the data business. Anyone else, that doesn't own the data, would make $1M revenue and maybe $50-100k/year in profits after paying data costs and Apple.

(Do you folks want answers like this, long and winding and about my/our app world, or just want me to hear the feedback and tally a vote for one-time pack purchases? Serious question.)

Let me put it back to you, if you are willing to volley a bit: If you were me, how would you charge for Flighty, with this context: Our data, server, and engineering costs are insane, let's call it $0.50 cents per flight (not true, but masking it from competitors). You can't say "decrease my costs" becuase I'm always trying to do that! How can I sell Flighty for $X up front for your entire life, while you fly 4-6 times per week?

I hope this isn't too frank. The volley back and forth I love.