United Airlines is just operating in a different league than any other US carrier when it comes to the pace at which it’s making improvements. That’s true on the tech front more than anywhere else, as United’s website and (in particular) app are just next level. Along those lines, United has introduced a cool new feature in its app, which avgeeks will certainly appreciate.
United Airlines app cool traveler flight stats
United’s app has been industry leading for a long time. We’re now at the point where app updates have gone from being about fixing things that are broken and making the travel journey easier, to being about just adding cool features that travelers love. It’s really a reflection of how much work United has put in.
Long story short, United has introduced a new app feature that shows your travel journey over the past couple of years, including the number of flights you’ve taken, the number of miles traveled, the flight time, the specific aircraft you’ve flown (down to the exact livery), etc.
Obviously no passenger actually needs this. But I think this is the perfect representation of how United is trying to create brand loyal customers and become a lifestyle brand. Now, I totally roll my eyes at any airline claiming it’s a lifestyle brand (Delta started this trend), but I do think there’s something to be said for features like this creating brand loyalty.
It’s not about this one feature in isolation, but instead, it’s about the overall feeling that you’re flying with an airline that’s really trying, where your business with that airline is repeatedly recognized. Obviously this new feature just comes down to good use of tech, but it still can’t help but make someone be impressed, and also think more favorably of the brand.
United is copying Flighty with this new feature
What’s noteworthy about this new app feature is that it’s almost a direct copy of the Flighty app, which lets you track the flights you’ve taken, and compiles that into some very cool visuals (along with other useful features). Not surprisingly, United’s version of this feature doesn’t include cumulative delays as part of the stats. 😉
Flighty is getting a bit sassy on social media about this new United app feature, pointing out that United hasn’t in fact acquired Flighty, but instead, has only acquired a copy machine. Hah.
What’s interesting is that earlier this year, United CEO Scott Kirby actually brought up in an interview how he wanted the airline to buy Flighty. He was asked about Flighty, and it was mentioned how United often gets inspiration from Flighty. Kirby responded as follows:
“I think we talk to them a lot. In fact, I told our team, I don’t know what they’ve done, I shouldn’t say this in public, but I told our team, ‘We should just go buy Flighty, we’ll keep running it as Flighty, but I just want smart people that aren’t sitting at headquarters that believe anything is possible. Don’t tell me why we can’t do it, but go buy Flighty, and just let those guys tell us what to do.’ They’re really good.”
So the copying is definitely still going on, but clearly the acquisition part hasn’t happened. At least not yet. 😉
Bottom line
United Airlines’ app has added a cool new “My flight journey” feature, which shows all kinds of cool stats about flights you’ve taken over the past couple of years. This looks mighty similar to what you’ll find on Flighty. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as United’s CEO has in the past said how he even wants the airline to buy the app. United’s app is on a different level than the competition…
What do you make of this new United app feature?
On a related note have you/would you ever post your flighty history? Would be insanely cool to see!
For flight history, you should also look at flightmemory.com. If one has tracked their flights, they are shareable via the app. I've used flightmemory.com for a couple of decades now.
Flighty also integrates with them, so one can export the flightmemory.com trips into Flighty by downloading each page and saving as an HTML file. Cumbersome, but it works. What glitches out, though, is if there's an airport code Flighty doesn't recognize. Whet that happens, Flighty...
For flight history, you should also look at flightmemory.com. If one has tracked their flights, they are shareable via the app. I've used flightmemory.com for a couple of decades now.
Flighty also integrates with them, so one can export the flightmemory.com trips into Flighty by downloading each page and saving as an HTML file. Cumbersome, but it works. What glitches out, though, is if there's an airport code Flighty doesn't recognize. Whet that happens, Flighty chokes, and it's a PITA to fix it for past flights.
Mine has been flightdiary.net which then got bought by and folded into flightradar24.com
Flighty also supports imports from flightradar24.com's data format.
I love Flighty. It's the best app for planning and tracking, hands down.
Agree, and I appreciate that often Flighty will pull delay info from the API faster than *cough* AA’s own app.
I hope they keep improving it. It’s still well worth the price of admission.
I love Flighty, both for how useful it is tracking your current and future flights, and for its passport feature for tracking flight history. Worth paying for the subscription (I did a Lifetime sub a while back).
A lot of work and investment underpins such innovations.
A decade ago, United Airlines operated on a rigid infrastructure anchored by aging, on-premises data centers and legacy mainframe systems. These green-screen programs made pushing updates slow and left the airline struggling to adapt when severe weather or scheduling disruptions hit.
To break free from these constraints, United launched a massive cloud-first migration, shutting down three major on-premises data centers and shifting over 80% of...
A lot of work and investment underpins such innovations.
A decade ago, United Airlines operated on a rigid infrastructure anchored by aging, on-premises data centers and legacy mainframe systems. These green-screen programs made pushing updates slow and left the airline struggling to adapt when severe weather or scheduling disruptions hit.
To break free from these constraints, United launched a massive cloud-first migration, shutting down three major on-premises data centers and shifting over 80% of its workload to AWS. United modernized its core mainframes adopting high-speed software delivery tools, slashed software deployment times by 75% and saved an estimated $2 billion. The monolithic codebase was completely rearchitected into global microservices, allowing developers to roll out features twice as fast as their competitors.
This backend overhaul completely transformed the passenger and employee experience. United rebuilt its mobile app around the traveler's journey, introducing features like bag-drop shortcuts, real-time luggage tracking, and virtual "Agent on Demand" customer service. On the tarmac and in the skies, United connected its fleet to AWS IoT Core, streaming 28 GB of data per minute from 20,000 aircraft sensors to predict maintenance issues before they caused delays. Today, that cloud foundation supports generative and agentic AI tools that automatically resolve regional flight incidents in minutes, completing United's decade-long evolution from a legacy carrier into a cloud-native digital leader.
These kinds of things really can't be overstated. Infrastructure updates like that are painful because it takes a tremendous amount of effort and focus from IT teams, with nothing customer facing to show for it while underway. So many executives don't have the patience or conviction to maintain the necessary focus to complete them, and instead prefer drawn out, incremental efforts that don't provide the same benefits and cause more complexity in terms of navigating...
These kinds of things really can't be overstated. Infrastructure updates like that are painful because it takes a tremendous amount of effort and focus from IT teams, with nothing customer facing to show for it while underway. So many executives don't have the patience or conviction to maintain the necessary focus to complete them, and instead prefer drawn out, incremental efforts that don't provide the same benefits and cause more complexity in terms of navigating tech debt. So some kudos are due to the senior execs that allowed United's IT teams to do this, but also kudos to the IT teams for being able to successfully advocate for this strategy.
I really wish more companies were allowed to focus on these types of initiatives, because it allows them to move so much more quickly and with more performant technology.
Unlike the Flighty app, presumably this new United feature works on non-iOS... *cough* (don't worry, friends, I'm cool, I gots an old-ish iPhone... not one of those filthy, uncouth Androids.)
lol ironically this is really the area where United exceeds Flighty in this case. Otherwise quite limited given it only goes back to 2025 and doesn't have all of the data that flighty does (and the visualization is more basic).
Android rules!
Regardless, UA app is actively worked on and UI is miles ahead of say… Alaska….
Alaska's app and website do more things than before, but they feel much more disjointed and harder to use than a year ago, going backward not forward. Example: it is so unintuitive how to do family miles sharing that Ben had to do an article explaining it.
Cool but also not really given it will likely show only united marketed (maybe even only operated) flights? Hardly a complete picture for most of us
Regarding your parenthetical about Delta @Ben, I agree that DL started this crazy "lifestyle brand" concept and with you that it's nute. As a 2MM and Diamond, I don't see DL (or any other airlline) as a lifestyle brand. The only way they impact my lifestyle is by getting me from point a to point b, sometimes smoothly and other times with some level of chaos.
Can you even explain what they are smoking?
I really enjoy Flighty, especially for the maps and graphics. I've considered a lifetime subscription, but it's a bit pricey. Anyone know if they tend to run sales for Black Friday or any other times of year?
Don't believe they've ever run promos for Lifetime. I will say, it has continually increased in price ($199 -> $249 which is what I bought it at -> $299). If you expect to use it for more than 5 years and are comfortable with the risk that it gets completely replicated by an airline (like United) and loses some value for you, then I would just bite the bullet and purchase.
For me, I was...
Don't believe they've ever run promos for Lifetime. I will say, it has continually increased in price ($199 -> $249 which is what I bought it at -> $299). If you expect to use it for more than 5 years and are comfortable with the risk that it gets completely replicated by an airline (like United) and loses some value for you, then I would just bite the bullet and purchase.
For me, I was already worried about United or Apple replicating features back when I purchased it in 2022, but the former was not a concern because I wanted both long historical data and also non-UA data. I also find it very useful for non-US airlines because their apps are typically horrible. And ultimately I don't think Apple will copy all features because many of them are very AV-geek focused (like telling me if I've flown on a specific plane before and how many times, or the detailed data around airport operations), so they wouldn't invest to that level.
Thanks! I appreciate your thoughts on the value of Lifetime, and I might just go ahead and get it.
Ironically United keeps data going back to 2015 that you can request they send to you (requires some prodding as they sometimes say they don't have it or can't send it and direct you to the website which has a row limit on updates). That means you can get a much longer history in flighty than United's app has (details on one option below).
You can then consolidate the United data (they send a...
Ironically United keeps data going back to 2015 that you can request they send to you (requires some prodding as they sometimes say they don't have it or can't send it and direct you to the website which has a row limit on updates). That means you can get a much longer history in flighty than United's app has (details on one option below).
You can then consolidate the United data (they send a csv per year), upload that to flightradar24.com, which then enriches the data.
Then request to do a bulk import to Flighty using the flightradar24.com format and export your flightradar24.com data. Send that to flighty and voila - you have all of your United activity going back to 2015 uploaded to Flighty.
Agreed, it only sees United's own bookings, so anyone who flies a mix of airlines still needs a separate log. myFlightradar24 is free and takes CSV imports, and Flighty is excellent on iPhone if you're happy to pay. Disclosure: I make TripStow, a web app that installs on iPhone and Android and keeps a lifetime log across every airline: miles, hours, airports, aircraft types and the tail number of each plane. It imports from myFlightradar24,...
Agreed, it only sees United's own bookings, so anyone who flies a mix of airlines still needs a separate log. myFlightradar24 is free and takes CSV imports, and Flighty is excellent on iPhone if you're happy to pay. Disclosure: I make TripStow, a web app that installs on iPhone and Android and keeps a lifetime log across every airline: miles, hours, airports, aircraft types and the tail number of each plane. It imports from myFlightradar24, OpenFlights, LogMyFlight or a CSV, so jetset's United CSV route would work there too. Comparison with Flighty, with sources: tripstow.com/compare/flighty