Boomers and seniors seeking to make holidays and vacations calmer are increasingly downloading smart phone applications to inform them about everything from the status of delayed flights and airport problems to excess baggage, bad weather and alternative airline choices.
FlightTrack, Flight Tracker and Flight Update
Each of these popular free or inexpensive (under $10) apps is downloadable for iPhones and other smart phones, including Blackberry and Android. Each helps you gauge the arrival times of flights already in transit or learn about delays that may be upcoming for flights you have booked or on which people you are meeting are traveling. They operate in real time, so you can consult them on the way to the airport.
Airport Flight Delays and Airline Data
The iPhone app Airport Flight Delays tells you exactly that – what airports are experiencing trouble and how much of a delay is occurring at each airline. Most major airlines, including Delta, United, Northwest and American offer their own timetable app combined with a booking engine so you can choose and select a flight while on the go. The app Excess Baggage lets a traveler know how much heavy luggage will cost on each airline.
TripIt and Comprehensive Tools
Travelers can digitize, miniaturize, share and consult their entire trip plans using any one of several new apps. Among the most popular: TripIt, which allows travelers to keep all the information they need about their flights, connections, hotels, meetings and tasks handy. Also popular: Pocket Express, which allows you to book flights and hotels and check flight status weather at destinations, as well as do a currency conversion and find a phone number for someplace at your destination.
Hotel Rooms, Train Reservations
Travelocity, Priceline and Expedia all have iPhone and other smart phone applications available for download to compare hotel rates or find a room. For those in a tight spot with bad delays, Hotels Near Me calls itself the first “worldwide GPS hotel finder for Android, iPhone and Blackberry. It promises that it has more than 68000 hotels in 71 countries available at the touch of a finger. For those who have loyalty points awaiting, Marriott and other chains have iPhone, BlackBerry and Android apps available.
Rather take the train? Amtrak has a mobile phone app for finding trains to a destination and booking a seat.
Help! I Don’t Speak This Language
For those who find themselves unexpectedly in a strange country, Talking Translator from lastminute.com offers a phrase book providing text and audio translations of essential phrases from English into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German.
Or, phone for help. In the U.K. International Calls (that’s the name of the app), charges just 1p per minute from an iPhone. Other cheap long-distance calling apps are available from Skype, Voipium, Truphone and Nimbuzz for various smart phones.
To sum up, a smart phone can help with all kinds of travel hassles on the go.
Grace Lichtenstein - I prefer "seasoned" to "senior" but whatever term you use, I have been an outdoor adventurer for most of my adult years. I am a cycling ...
