FlightBoard is a single-purpose Flight Tracking app for iPad that provides live airport Departures and Arrivals information. So the app’s function is a simple but ever-so-useful one, particularly for frequent traveler. I’ve been taking a look at the app and have to say I’m impressed.
FlightBoard: Flight Tracking For iPad
Departures And Arrivals From Around The World for the Frequent Flyer
Strong Points & Notable Features? It’s got a very simple and effective UI. It does look just like a good set of boards you’d expect to see at major airports. The columns it displays are: Flight / Airline, Origin, Gate, Arrives, and Status. Everything you need to do can be done on just the app’s one main screen. You start by tapping on the Airports button at the bottom center of the app. As soon as you start typing an airport or city name, it starts showing relevant results. You can tap on any of the main board’s column titles to sort by that entry (by gate, arrival or departure time, status etc). One tap on a button at the top left of the app toggles between Arrivals and Departures information on the board. There’s also a search bar at the top right of the screen. Navigation could not be any easier, this is the best flight tracking for iPad.
The search bar works nicely presenting results as soon as you begin typing. It found Dallas for me after just typing ‘da’. It finds even smaller airports like London’s Stansted, and even Georgetown, Texas. When you hit the Airports button it also remembers and shows airports you have recently used.
A single tap on an individual flight listing pops up a sharing bar, from which you can quickly share that flight’s arrival or departure details via email, Twitter or Facebook. There’s also a button on this bar that links directly to real-time flight tracking from the Flight Track app (published by the same developers) if you have it installed. It looks good in both modes, but portrait mode does chop off the important Status column so it’s best to use it in landscape.
Weaknesses / Missing Features? None that I can spot thus far, though I am not a frequent traveler any more so there may well be some that others will notice when using the app.
Overall, FlightBoard is a well-designed and executed app with a simple and effective interface that gives you all the information you want in just a trap or two. It looks like a must-have for frequent flyers and a useful app even for those who don’t travel that often but have visitors who arrive at local airports.
This app looks good but is pretty useless. I was sitting in a lounge in Peru the other week, waiting fr my delayed flight. The lounge flight tv was broken, so I fired up this app, however it still had my original flight time, not the delayed time, so if the data is not accurate, this app is just eye candy. I googled for some live info and found a website with free accuate data n the delayed flights. Much more useful.
I caught over 75 flights this last year within Australia and have used FlightBoard in anger. And I am disappointed at having paid for this app – does Apple have a returns policy?
I agree completely with Zan on the point about FlightBoard not displaying up to date flight status. I suspect this is down to the developer relying on data feeds that are not updated as frequently as the system that drives airport monitors.
However, I do have one one key tip (based on my ‘Up in the air’ life) to offer developers of such flight information apps:
Drop the airport monitor interface and allow me, the user, to go direct to and latch onto the data set for the ONE flight I am interested in – the specific one I rocked up to the airport to catch! Heck, its the one I bought a ticket for!
And once details of that flight are on my iPad screen, leave it there but keep updating its status.
I don’t want to peck at an alphabetic display of all flights leaving Sydney to find the one I want! Why present me all the irrelevant information relating to other flights? Why subject me, at the very moment when time is of the essence, to a process of pecking around on my iPad looking for my flight? And why make me hit a refresh button to get a status update of all the flights relating to that airport?
The point is that these apps should be about displaying information for users relevant to a specific flight – the one they are catching or the one they are meeting to collect someone from. Almost no one (except the odd plane spotter) is ever interested in knowing the status of all flights except in extreme circumstances when a pattern starts to develop like flight delays due to adverse weather or some other factor.
Do what I suggest and the volume of data downloaded would also drop radically from having to retrieve all data sets for all the flights for that airport to just the one specific data set for the one specific flight I am interested in! And that should also speed things up, huh?
FlightBoard in its current state is nothing more than a crude information repository that can be trusted to the same extent as a printed timetable at a bus stop…
End of rant… toys are back in the pram.