Not Sure if Your Flight Is on Time? Use Your iPhone’s Hidden Flight Tracker | Global News Avenue

Even if you haven’t flown anywhere this summer, you’ve probably heard of Massive IT outage This affects computers using both Crowdstrike and Windows operating systems. Power outages render these devices unusable, preventing workers at hospitals, banking institutions, airlines, and other businesses from performing essential job functions. What a mess.

For airlines, this results in thousands of Flight cancellations and delaysTo make matters worse, people who are expected to fly during the outage will have a difficult time even determining if their flights are affected. That’s all in the past, and hopefully nothing of this magnitude will happen again anytime soon, but if your airline’s website or app is down, you may have another option for checking the status of your flight: your iPhone.

Hidden within the iPhone Messages app is a built-in flight tracker that lets you view flight status details and quickly share them with others. We’ll show you how below.

If you want to know more, don’t miss it The best and worst airlines for flight cancellations and The best hidden features in iOS 18.

How to track your flight via iMessage

Before we begin, you must meet some prerequisites:

• make sure iMessage is enabled (It does not work with SMS/MMS messages).
• Whether you’re sending this message to someone (even yourself) or someone else is sending it to you, you’ll need to include your flight number in the text message.
• Flight numbers must be sent in the following format: (airline) (flight number)such as American Airlines 9707.

Launch the native Messages app on your iPhone and open the text message thread containing your flight information. You’ll know the flight tracker feature is working when the text containing flight information is underlined, which means it’s operational and you can click on it.

If your flight is months away or has already passed, you may see a message: “Flight information unavailable.” You may also see another flight that is not yours as the airline recycles the flight number.

How to access hidden flight trackers

While the airline name/flight number format highlighted above is the best method, there are other text messaging options that will get you the same results. So suppose we stick to American Airlines 9707other options that may display the flight tracker include:

• American Airlines 9707 (no spaces)
• American Airlines 9707 (only one space)
• AA9707 (Airline name is abbreviated, no spaces)
• AA 9707 (abbreviation and space)

I recommend that you spell out the airline name in full and add a space between the two pieces of information – like in the previous section – because for some airlines these alternative options may not work.

Track your flight details in real time

Once everything is set up, click on the flight information in the text message. If the feature is working properly, you should see the following two options appear in the quick actions menu:

• Preview flight: View flight details. If you would like to see more information about your flight, please click this button.
• Copy flight code: Copy the flight code to the clipboard (if you want to send flight details to someone else via SMS or email).

If you choose Preview flightsat the top of the window you’ll see the best part of this feature: the live flight tracker map. A line will connect the two destinations, and a small aircraft will move between them, indicating where the flight is at that moment.

Below the map you’ll find important flight information:

• Airline name and flight number
• flight status (Arrival on time, delays, cancellations, etc.)
• Terminal and gate numbers (Applies to arrivals and departures)
• Arrival and departure times
• flight time
• Baggage claim area (number of baggage carousels)

If you swipe left on the lower half of the flight tracker, you can switch between flights, but only if a return flight is available.

If you want to know more, don’t miss it How to get your iPhone out of emergency SOS mode and Hidden Safari features on Mac make multitasking a breeze.