United Airlines Now Texts Live Radar Maps To Passengers During Delays

Very impressive. I’ve always appreciated how good UA’s app is in communicating delays, and more importantly the cause of the delays. It’s adorable that Delta’s app plays a celebratory animation when your flight is early, but said app is not super helpful when you are late.

I often say that the real differentiator among commoditized services like airlines - yes, that includes DL - is how IROPs are handled. Far and away my top concern on any flight is getting where I'm going, when I'm scheduled. But IROPs will happen, and being told to sit tight indefinitely doesn't sit well. Or, more frequently, being told *nothing at all* and piecing together that we're delayed on account of the scheduled departure was 5 minutes ago and there's no physical aeroplane present.

UA's mobile app is industry leading and leverages one of the big advantages we have in the US, which is our booming tech industry and talent pool.

Nearly every airline website and app in the world is hybridized garbage that isn't optimized for either desktop or mobile UI.

UA's app is industry leading and works very seamlessly. For example, it has the iPhone dynamic island integration that counts down towards boarding and automatically updating to IFE and flight info, once its detected that you've boarded the aircraft. Meanwhile Delta's app is a laggy mess that fails to add boarding passes to Apple Wallet half the time.

The other North American airline's ought to invest more into the mobile and tech experience, as we already have the top tech talent in the world and at the very least can offer that as a competitive advantage to the rest of the world.

This is something I’d imagine most of your readers do on their own with a mix of weather, flightradar24, or even flightaware. I tend to notice the weather excuse (given by an agent, etc) is right 60-70% so it’ll be interesting how the transparency is viewed by the average flier but I have to imagine it’s a really good thing overall
Great move by United

United's app is by far the best. Being able to rebook my flight, a free hotel and a lyft to get there through the app and not by queuing for hours like I had to with other airlines when flights got cancelled was a far better experience!

Delta has no need for such frivolity, they control the weather directly.

United's app for years now has set the bar for what an airline app should be and I agree I'm shocked Delta hasn't tried one bit to address and improve the user experience on their app. Delta's app has a lot of useless information at the forefront of their app meaning one click away. Meanwhile you have to hunt for information you actually need especially during IRROPs. One thing I absolutely do not like about the Delta app is I can't see seat availability on any flight on the day of departure hour/s prior to departure. Which is information I need during IRROPs when I'm looking to change my flight. Whereas on UA I can see seat availability for all the flights and quickly rebook myself in a confirmed seat while at 35,000 feet.

Delta was at the forefront with tracking bags placing RFIDs in bag tags allowing customers to track their bags in real time, they are at the forefront in other areas but when it comes to their app its awful and doesn't come close to what United's app can do.

In my opinion Delta's app creates more work for their customer service centers at their hubs than it alleviates because Delta does not give the public the type of information and tools in their app that United does in their app.

How much UA pay for this post?

Agree on all the comments below on the app. Where UA still needs to improve is posting realistic departure times on delayed flights. For example, recently was delayed LGA-IAD; the delayed flight was arriving at 2:30, and the departure time was showing at 2:35.

The App is best. Just another reason to fly UA. The flight status features alone leave DL and AA in the dust. Thanks Ben for highlighting UA info. I will test it out tomorrow on my flight out of MCO.

LOL...all the United hate! Objectively, UA has the best app of any airline, hands down. I'm a regular United flyer (1K) and whenever I'm on another carrier and have to use their app, I'm remind of this one area where United particularly excels.

This is really a dumb idea. There are all types of radar pictures, which one will they make available? Are they talking about sending a link to a terminal radar, with a close in range, or a wide scale radar more appropriate for enroute deviations? If there is a huge line of weather approaching an airport, will this inform passengers or scare them? How would the average passenger interpret the information? Will they know the difference between a display that shows moderate precip versus one that shows isolated severe cells? Will United differentiate between the two? Every time it rains is United going to send a link to a radar display and say “see, it’s not our fault “. United’s passengers are not meteorologists, flight dispatchers or pilots, don’t treat them like they are.

I’m 100% sure $0. Just an objective update from a respected blogger.

100% agree. Although I am a ~95% loyal AA flyer due to route and schedule circumstances, I’ve always been impressed by UA’s tech every time I’ve flown them in the past ~5 years. They’re investing in customer-facing tech where others aren’t.

The United app with show a sequence of where the plane is coming from and also the reason for the delay. Crew shortage, mechanical problem or weather day. It is the best app and they are being more transparent with their customers

In a way DL does end up controlling "the weather". If DL isn't transparent about the reason for delays, then they can better control the communication around delays and reduce compensation with the excuse of "the weather" within the regulations set forth by the FAA. Too much favor to airlines in those weather related regs IMO, but... I've been in a situation where DL has said "the weather" caused a cancellation on a route and I hopped on a competitors flight an hour later. Somehow the competition was able to fly in the same "the weather"...

Radar pictures do nothing when the FAA issues delays because of staffing - which happens repeatedly at EWR far more than any other hub. and this is after UA gutted its schedules at EWR last summer after the disastrous overscheduling - which itself is a by product of the FAA's decision to remove slot controls at EWR only a decade ago because of UA's underutilization of its slots even as LGA and JFK remained slot controlled..

And part of the issue for UA is that its hubs are located in much more competitive markets than any other of the big 4 which means that even when legitimate weather adds to delays, other airlines are not going to cancel more to keep UA's operation on track.
You can see this play out at DEN where the growth of WN and UA has resulted in a noticeable deterioration in on-time over the past 5 years and it will only get worse. While DEN had excellent on-time, all of the growth in gates is not accompanied by a growth in airspace capacity.
IAH along w/ the rest of Texas is seeing much higher than usual delays because of above normal storm activity and that will continue with Beryl hitting next week.
ORD is the only large hub that is better off than it was in the past because of the reconfiguration of runways.

UA, despite trying is still 4-5 points in on-time worse than DL and they are not closing the gap. Lots of people love to talk about the fare advantage that DL in its "monopoly" hub airports and yet those big 4 interior US hubs move 60-70% connections and local fares are not higher than US averages.

DL's advantage in its big 4 airports is that it is able to schedule with a big enough buffer that weather delays have a minimal impact on schedule because DL makes up such a large proportion of the flight activity at its hub airports. ATL, DTW, MSP and SLC consistently rank much higher than other airline hub airports which makes it easy for DL to offset inevitable delays in NYC and Florida which hit everyone.

DOT on-time and consumer complaint data -which has recently been updated to include through December 2023 after months of no data along with JD Power data shows that UA can't use its supposed advantages to deliver an industry leading product or service.
All of the data in the app only matters if it is part of whole-product superiority and that doesn't exist according to actual consumers that rank all of the US airlines.

Every time I’ve booked and delta and paid for the seat selection it fails to assign the seat and rejects the payment. It’s awful trying to book in delta with their app and website.

What does this have to do with the United app? Delta is also my airline of choice but you can stop making everything a pissing contest.

it's not a pissing contest. It's about facts and perspective.

All of the information in the app is great but if it doesn't translate into measurably better on-time or customer service, then what is the benefit.

People love to talk about anecdotes with the airline industry but there are clearly other factors that matter more or the things people think matter don't really matter in aggregate.

And, as has been noted, many of these features in the UA app came from the CO app and were there long before UA really started focusing on improving its reliability which simply says that other factors, not the app, are what has made the difference - and yet UA is closer to AA than DL in most operational and customer service metrics.

"All of the data in the app only matters if it is part of whole-product superiority and that doesn't exist according to actual consumers that rank all of the US airlines."

This is such a ridiculous statement. Of course it matters. No one is saying "United is beating Delta on product because this one new feature came out" or "United is the best airline in the world because of radar maps".

I'm a hub captive to either United or American - Delta is not viable in Chicago.
Data like this does matter to me because I fly United and inevitably there will be delays at some point. I prefer to have more information at my fingertips as it does, in fact, make me feel more in control or aware of actions I should take or expectations I should change for myself in terms of the delay. The data does matter in isolation, completely distinct from the 'whole product'. It doesn't improve the crappy food but it does make a difference in my delay experience. This is my OPINION, so you can't in fact say it's wrong.

This isn't an argument on who is a better airline overall, simply a point that United has been adding beneficial information to their app that others have not.

So you have no idea what they're doing but you are concluding it's a dumb idea? I agree in theory there's a lot that could be hard to interpret here but without actually seeing the implementation in practice you can hardly write it off...