It is like a shared ritual.  We have all been there.  Your friend, mother, mother-in-law, or other random visitor is coming into town for a visit.  Your job is to meet them at the airport.  Unless you live across the street from the airport, this requires an incredible feat of timing and coordination.  Otherwise, your friend ends up standing outside baggage claim for half an hour…or you are driving around the terminal in endless circles (don’t even think about pulling over to catch your breath).  What you need is some app which will give you the status of any flight.  What you need is FlightView on the Palm Pre.

FlightView is a pretty simple, but relatively effective app.  From the main screen, all you need to do is enter your flight information under “Track a Flight” in order to get started.  You can enter the information by flight numbers or by route.

Once you have entered the information, you can view a map showing the path of the flight, with an airplane showing its exact location along the route.  Beneath that, you will find the scheduled (and actual) departure and arrival times, as well as the amount of time remaining in the flight.  It will even show you at which gate you can expect the plane to arrive (not that you would be able to make it through security to meet your friends, but what the heck).

From here, just tap the plus sign to add the flight to your favorites, where you can access it quickly and easily in order to keep tabs on the flight’s progress.  In order to keep you even more completely informed, you can also add the flight information to your calendar, or set up alerts so you will receive a notification if anything changes.

Like I said, it is a pretty simple app.  It does one thing, and does it well.  Don’t be fooled by this simplicity, however.  The developers have done a fantastic job of finding a niche which everyone could use, and filling it with this fantastic little app.

Be Sociable, Share!

•