TripTidy's beta opened ten weeks ago. Since then it has been through real trips: Boston, London, a week in Hawaii, a lot of airport runs. Two things came out of that, and almost everything below follows from them.
Half of flying is someone else's flight. Collecting your partner, dropping your mom at the airport, the flight you booked for someone who'll never open the app. Travel apps ignore those, or bury them in your own trips.
A delay is never just a delay. Two hours late isn't really about the plane. It's the rental counter that shuts at ten, the hotel that stops checking in at midnight, the table booked for eight.
Watch any flight, just by its number
There's now a Watching tab for flights you're not on. Type a flight number and a date and it's tracked: delays, the gate, landing, the baggage carousel. Flights you book for someone else land there on their own, rather than stretching one of your trips.
If you're collecting someone, you get a time to leave aimed at when they'll reach the kerb, not when the wheels touch: there's the taxi to the gate and the walk off the plane first. When the flight slips, the time to leave moves with it. (More on the maths in when to leave for a pickup.)
The whole flight on your Lock Screen
The Lock Screen card used to say very little. Now it draws the flight: the route with a progress bar that fills gate to gate, the times, and a countdown that steps from boarding to the door closing to departure. When the schedule slips, the new time sits beside the one you booked, struck through.
“Early” and “late” are now always measured against the schedule. We once told someone their running-late flight was “arriving 11 minutes early” because the estimate had improved. That's fixed.
Gate to gate, on the map
The flight map shows the path the plane actually takes: the taxi out from the gate, the climb, any re-routing in the air, and the taxi in until it's parked. It used to stop tracking at landing; it now follows the plane all the way to the gate.
At the airport, the gate map shows every gate, which way you're facing, the lounges by terminal, and on a tight connection, how long the walk is. You can browse them for airports around the world, too.
When a delay breaks something
When a flight slips, TripTidy now checks everything after it. If you'd now miss the hotel's check-in cutoff, the rental counter's closing time or a dinner booking, that plan turns amber, with how late you'd actually get there, counting the drive across town and the wait for bags. You hear about it while there's still time to call ahead.
When you land
- A ride, already addressed. Every hotel, dinner and venue has a Ride button. Uber or Lyft opens with the drop-off filled in; long-press for the other one to compare.
- Straight to the booking. “Open in Airbnb” opens your reservation, not the app's home screen. The same for Booking.com, Vrbo, OpenTable, Hertz, Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt.
- What was in the PDF. A rental's door code and real address are often only in an attachment. TripTidy now reads PDF attachments, so they're on the trip when you arrive.
Smaller things you might notice
- Dinners and events in your own city get an Around town list, instead of being asked which trip they belong to.
- The leave-by card switches to “On your way” once you've actually left, even if you set off early.
- Fewer pings: a gate that's announced days out doesn't buzz you until the day itself.
What's next
Paying for TripTidy, once the beta ends, means paying for it to keep watch over the whole trip, not just the flight (the plan is published). Two things we're working on to make that watch wider:
- A trip check-up. “No hotel booked for the night of the 14th.” “Dinner is twenty minutes after you land.” “The car is due back after your flight leaves.” Gaps and clashes spotted before they find you.
- Passport and entry checks. Starting with the one that catches people out most: a passport that needs six months left on it for where you're going.
No dates. We'd rather ship them right than ship them on a deadline.
The ask hasn't changed
Join the beta, take a trip, and tell us where we fell short: hello@triptidy.app, or just forward the booking email that went wrong. Nearly everything above started as one of those.