United's App Just Got More Like Flighty - Including a Special Livery Collection

United Airlines rolled out some pretty interesting updates to its mobile app recently. If you're familiar with Flighty - the popular aviation-focused travel app that tracks your flights, aircraft types, and other geeky details - some of what United added will look very familiar.

The timing is notable. Earlier this year, United's CEO publicly expressed interest in acquiring Flighty. That deal didn't happen, but it seems United decided to build some of the features themselves rather than keep looking for an acquisition. As we’ve seen with many tech firms over the past years, if you can’t buy it, you build it.

The result is an app that's genuinely more interesting for aviation enthusiasts than it was six months ago.

What United Added

The new app features include:

Flight tracking and history visualization. The kind of trip-tracking functionality that Flighty is known for like being able to see your flight history over time, visualize routes you've flown, and so on. For loyal United flyers, this creates a cool record of your flying activity directly in the airline's own app.

Aircraft type tracking. Rather than just showing you a flight number and route, the app now surfaces aircraft type information. For AvGeeks who care whether they flew a 737-800 vs a 737 MAX 9 more this year, this is useful native functionality.

Special livery "collection" feature. To me this is the standout feature. The app now lets you "collect" special livery aircraft you've flown on. If you happened to fly United's special schemes, those get tracked in a collection you can view and build over time.

The gamification angle is clever. It gives passengers a reason to look up aircraft types before flying (hoping to catch a special livery) and creates a persistent record of unique aircraft they've experienced.

Historical flight data. This provides more detail on past flights than the standard "where you flew" record most airline apps provide.

My Take

I don't fly United often, so my app was pretty empty when I check it. But browsing through the new features, it's clear United put real effort into making the experience more interesting for enthusiasts.

Nobody is choosing an airline based on app features alone, but when you're deciding between carriers that are roughly equivalent on price and schedule, little details like this can sometimes nudge the preference.

That said, I'll still be using Flighty as my primary flight tracking app. Flighty does a bunch of things United's app can't, like tracking all airlines you fly, has more comprehensive flight data, better notifications, and a more polished overall experience. For anyone who flies multiple airlines (which is most of us), a single-airline app is going to be limited by its scope.

But for United loyalists, the Flighty-adjacent features are a solid improvement.

The Bigger Picture

This is part of a broader trend of airlines investing in app experiences that go beyond just booking and check-in. AA's auto-seat-move feature that we covered recently is another example. Airlines are finally recognizing that the app is a touchpoint for engagement, not just a way for completing transactions.

Delta has had similar nice-to-have features in their app for years. AA is catching up. United just added their own flavor. The arms race on app experience is real. Even BA recently updated their app - although that one still has a long way to go

For now, I'll continue to use Flighty for cross-airline tracking. But I'll be curious to see what United adds next, and whether other airlines follow with their own enthusiast-focused features.

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