6 ms·

Love Flightly, one of the best apps ever. Beautiful design + incredibly useful info.

• sneak 6mo ago
  Flighty is poorly designed. It’s one of those slick apps designed to superficially look nice without actually being well-thought-out. That’s not what design is or should mean; that’s just aesthetics. Case in point: one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration, is displayed in the tiniest type size on the flight info display pane, in light grey text on a slightly darker grey background. It’s bordering on illegible. It also doesn’t surface boarding time (or countdown to same), which is the single most important piece of data a flight tracker can give you.
  • nemothekid 6mo ago
    >one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration, What is your use case for Flighty, and why would this information be important at all?
    • sneak 6mo ago
      I regularly fly all over the world, and it's nice to know how long my flights are going to be? I'm not always flying direct, and seeing the lengths of the legs and the lengths of the layovers allows me to plan my day and my sleep schedule.
      • signatoremo 6mo ago
        You do have landing time for all of the legs? That’s more useful than duration. For your sleep, you care about landing says, at midnight, as oppose to a 10 hr flight from Paris that may or may not arrive during day time at the destination.
        • sneak 6mo ago
          No, duration is far more useful than landing time when my basic desire is to know how long I’m going to be on the plane. A 2h flight vs a 6h flight is a huge difference in experience. Also, landing time is given in the destination timezone, which does me no good. The part of the day that it lands is basically irrelevant to me.
  • exidy 6mo ago
    > one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration Flighty is all about getting you to the airport in time for your flight, so the most important pieces of information are things like departure times, connection times, delay information, terminal and boarding gate. These are prioritised in the interface. The flight duration is set when you book the flight and it's not going to change, there is no reason to prioritise this. > It also doesn’t surface boarding time I think this would be useful but difficult data to get. Airlines sometimes will push boarding announcements to their own apps but I doubt they would agree to feed Flighty.
    • ZeWaka 6mo ago
      Boarding is hard because it's at the discretion of the airlines, yeah. Departure time is easier because of https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT
      • exidy 6mo ago
        > Departure time is easier because of https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT If you're in the US!
        • ZeWaka 6mo ago
          True. I think you'd have to scrape it from sites that expose it or pay for an API for a country like the UK.
      • chrony3705 6mo ago
        [dead]
    • yosito 6mo ago
      In my extensive travel experience, more than half the time the boarding time listed at the gate isn't even correct.
    • ymolodtsov 6mo ago
      Boarding times are basically not reliable at all. Any time I come 10m after the official boarding time on the ticket there's still a standing line.
  • rconti 6mo ago
    I think the design is great; my only gripe is it's awful on the iPad mini. But so are Apple apps. They think it makes sense for the side drawer (in portrait mode) to cover half the screen. Which is especially insane in apps with maps where the drawer COVERS THE "YOU ARE HERE" DOT.
  • zeroonetwothree 6mo ago
    Why is duration important? Surely you already knew what it was when you booked and it's not like it changes. I can't say that I've ever wanted to double check the duration of my flight.
    • friendzis 6mo ago
      Knowing when I land, especially if there are any disturbances, is probably THE most important piece of information with regards to a flight. I have already planned my airport arrival, at least for the first leg, and the worst scenario is I have to stare at a screen/book for a bit longer. If the landing is delayed I might need to make amendments to the plans for the rest of the day.
      • fourwood 6mo ago
        The complaint is about the visibility of the flight duration (e.g. "this flight will take 1h 50m"), not the landing time (e.g. "this flight will land at 11:25am"). The landing time is prominently displayed in the flight info pane. Knowing your flight duration (gate-to-gate time) is not impacted whatsoever by flight delays, so I think you're conflating these two things inappropriately.
  • oslem 6mo ago
    I use their widgets more than the app itself. They display the most important information I need well imo.