I recently stumbled upon a really cool feature from Apples’ iOS on the iPhone that makes tracking your flights and the flights of others extremely easy. Evidently Apple released this feature back in late 2015. However, I just realized it existed this past weekend when texting flight numbers to my mother. The feature allows iOS or Mac users to simply click on a hyperlinked flight number to bring up a “preview flight” page. Clicking the preview flight option opens a beautifully designed flight information card. The card clearly shows the flight status, flight origin, flight destination, scheduled flight times, and a nice map of the flight path.
How Preview Flights Works On iOS
After entering a flight number in various iOS applications (iMessage, Notes, Calendar, Mail) iOS automatically recognizes the flight number and underlines it. The process works similar to sending dates or times in a text message. Just as you can click the underlined date to create a calendar event you can also click the flight number to view the preview flight card. When selecting an underlined flight number you are given the preview flight option along with a copy option. Selecting the preview flight option launches the preview flight card.
I played around with this functionality and found that flight numbers entered in iMessage or Notes apps were most easily recognized. The Apple Mail application did not recognize flight numbers as easily as other apps. There were a few instances where the flight number was not underlined and the preview flights functionality was available.
Another cool aspect to this feature is that iOS identifies flight numbers in various forms. For example, typing American Airlines 46 or simply AA46 were both recognized by my iPhone.
A Few Examples Of Preview Flights
As you can see from the cards above the cards clearly show the important details of any flight. Based on a few dozen tests I ran it seemed as thought flight data mirrored data found a FlightAware which is often updated prior to domestic airline mobile apps or gate departure boards.
Functionality of Preview Flights
I often get frustrated when traveling because of the constant updates to friend or family about my flight status. This is especially true when a flight is delayed and someone is picking you up from the airport. Usually during a flight delay I’m so happy to finally get to my seat that I forget to text my ride letting them know that I boarded or that we’re taking off. Then once in the air I often don’t have wifi to relay my flight status to anyone concerned. The preview flights feature is a great option to simply send your exact flight number to anyone interested in your flight status so they can easily track your flight without having to copy/paste the flight number into a 3rd party website or app.
Final Thoughts
I thought I knew my iPhone pretty well, but was recently very surprised to find this functionality given how much I fly. I can’t tell you how many times in the past few years I’ve had to constantly text my ride at the airport with each rolling delay only to forget to text them when we actually left! I love this feature because now I can simply text my flight number to someone and they can easily click the number and preview the flight to see what the status of the flight is.
