United Airlines Launches Redesigned iOS App with Travel Cards, Multi-Location Booking

So it sounds like they built their own version of Apple's Passbook, going by some of the features listed.

Yea, but United Breaks Guitars.

That home screen looks a little like (dare I say it...!) Windows 8.

I use this app as I travel almost exclusively on united. I will give this new version a whirl. I did think in the old app it was a bit clunky the way you had to load passbook with your boarding pass, so hopefully this will be an improvement.

Cuban Missles said:

I use this app as I travel almost exclusively on united. I will give this new version a whirl. I did think in the old app it was a bit clunky the way you had to load passbook with your boarding pass, so hopefully this will be an improvement.

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Yeah, the old app was clunky but quite powerful this one has the potential to be even better.

I hope they kept the "where is this plane coming from" feature in flight status as it has helped me predict when flights are going to be late even though they still claim to be "on time".

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balamw said:

Yeah, the old app was clunky but quite powerful this one has the potential to be even better.

I hope they kept the "where is this plane coming from" feature in flight status as it has helped me predict when flights are going to be late even though they still claim to be "on time".

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Totally agree, that is the best feature ever. When United merged with Continental I was sure to actually answer the surveys and stress that the Continental app, and specifically that feature, was the better of the two. I was happy that was the one they kept.

I had always felt that the United app was pretty lacking overall compared to, say, the Delta app (which IMHO is awesome even if the airline itself sucks). Hoping this update brings a little more parity.

balamw said:

Yeah, the old app was clunky but quite powerful this one has the potential to be even better.

I hope they kept the "where is this plane coming from" feature in flight status as it has helped me predict when flights are going to be late even though they still claim to be "on time".

B

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You dont need this app for that, flight aware app does this too and is probably more accurate

brownpaw said:

I had always felt that the United app was pretty lacking overall compared to, say, the Delta app (which IMHO is awesome even if the airline itself sucks). Hoping this update brings a little more parity.

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You might have to be specific because I have and use both apps and the United one is so much better with a lot more capability, like booking a reward ticket or seeing my upgrade status on the standby list.

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amcomis said:

You dont need this app for that, flight aware app does this too and is probably more accurate

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But since I'm checking in with the United app, checking standby status, getting my boarding pass, etc. why do I want another app?

TheRealTVGuy said:

That home screen looks a little like (dare I say it...!) Windows 8.

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You mean iOS 7 looks like Window 8? Unfortunately I agree.

I also agree with others that the "where is this aircraft coming from" feature is gold. On more than one occasion I rebooked a flight because I could see it being late before it was ever posted by the airline.

United was smart to leave in all the good stuff that came from the Continental app. In fact, most of what makes United a somewhat decent airline today is a hold over from Continental (i.e. showers in the clubs in Houston. Nothing is better than a hot shower after a red-eye).

Ignore

Problem is United is the WORST airline I have ever flown! There was an issue with my seat when I flew with my wife and there were several deadheads on the flight. They made one of US leave the flight, even though several of the deadheads said they could have easily went on a later flight and been fine.

I am not sure under what circumstances this is considered acceptable. My wife was the one to leave, as she could see that I was steaming mad and it would have been a bad situation. The did give her a first class seat and a lunch voucher, but only after she talked with several people there about it. That should have been offered from the beginning.

cmwade77 said:

Problem is United is the WORST airline I have ever flown! There was an issue with my seat when I flew with my wife and there were several deadheads on the flight. They made one of US leave the flight, even though several of the deadheads said they could have easily went on a later flight and been fine.

I am not sure under what circumstances this is considered acceptable. My wife was the one to leave, as she could see that I was steaming mad and it would have been a bad situation. The did give her a first class seat and a lunch voucher, but only after she talked with several people there about it. That should have been offered from the beginning.

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I'm not sure that your one experience is indicative of the airline as a whole and, for someone that has flown a lot, I have my fair share of horror stories for each airline but what exactly does that have to do with the app?

I hope that they maintain Passbook support. I had the opportunity to use it recently, and it was wonderful.

I used their app to load the checked-in tickets into Passbook. The morning of the flight, my lock screen included the airline tickets on-screen. I could swipe on them to bring the tickets up, and could easily swipe between my and my wife's tickets. This made it easy to bring the tickets up for scanning at the airport (TSA security point and the airline gate). We had a connector, and upon getting out of "airplane mode" the phone automatically cycled to having the connector's tickets on the lock screen. When I landed at my destination, the tickets disappeared from the lock screen. All four tickets were still available inside of the Passbook application, if I really wanted to see them. The return flights home provided the same experience.

It's much more convenient than having to unlock the phone, find the app, and then fumble with it to pull up the boarding pass.

giantfan1224 said:

You might have to be specific because I have and use both apps and the United one is so much better with a lot more capability, like booking a reward ticket or seeing my upgrade status on the standby list.

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But since I'm checking in with the United app, checking standby status, getting my boarding pass, etc. why do I want another app?

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hello its more accurate

Looks good, works like $%#&

Thanks for breaking a perfectly serviceable App. Like Toyota, United put UI flash over being able to get to important information with one tap. Now I have to search through multiple levels of menus instead of one tap taking me to the critical info I need while I am running through the airport to a connection or in the back of a taxi trying to rebook. This is a freaking useless update.

osx11 said:

TO THE MODERATORS

Could you guys make a separate iOS App section of Macrumors where you could post all this app update news?

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MOD NOTE:

That's where this already is: iOS Blog Discussion.

On the normal, "desktop" site these articles don't appear on the front page, but on the sidebar and a separate tab.

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amcomis said:

hello its more accurate

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The United app is as accurate as I've needed it to be.

TheRealTVGuy said:

That home screen looks a little like (dare I say it...!) Windows 8.

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Their tile layout doesn't garner a lot of complaints. While I have an iPhone 5S, I have used their Windows phones and there is not much to complain about design-wise.

osx11 said:

TO THE MODERATORS Could you guys make a separate iOS App section of Macrumors where you could post all this app update news?

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Let me introduce you to: https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/site-and-forum-feedback.66/. Please whine there.

THIS!!! If it got rid of passbook I plan to delete it from my phone. Is rather house a paper ticket. Digging around my phone for a "convenient" travel card is a deal breaker. Why on earth would I do that when a passbook enabled app just pulls it up in my lock screen?!?
Went through the app but can see it (don't have a flight scheduled though). Can anyone confirm?

If they ditched passbook integration it's back to paper for me.

Ledgem said:

I hope that they maintain Passbook support. I had the opportunity to use it recently, and it was wonderful.....It's much more convenient than having to unlock the phone, find the app, and then fumble with it to pull up the boarding pass.

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The update notes say they added the TSA Pre-Check logo to the Passbook boarding pass. This would suggest Passbook support has been maintained.

Interesting to compare the Delta App with the United one. Delta could do well to add the live update feature to the Passbook card to reflect gate changes etc in realtime, like the United one.

How did you guys get it working with Passbook? I flew twice and both times I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get my tickets into Passbook.

Passbook just tells me to download the United app which I did, and I signed in and checked in with the app, no dice, wtf?

Maybe it's US only? Since I am flying from Canada..

Limboistik said:

Passbook just tells me to download the United app which I did, and I signed in and checked in with the app, no dice, wtf?

Maybe it's US only? Since I am flying from Canada..

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I doubt that it's US only. It wasn't 100% automatic. I don't remember the process exactly, and these steps apply to the older app; hopefully they've streamlined it a bit with the newer one.

If I remember right, first I had to add my confirmation number to the United app. However, then I had to add the number to my itinerary within the app (basically, just pasting the same number in again - it seemed a bit silly, considering that the information was already in the app). Checking in through the app becomes possible 24 hours before your scheduled flight time. I believe that when you reach the end of the check-in process, there's a set of options about how you would like your boarding passes. I stuck with the electronic passes. However, you then need to view the passes within the app; at that point, there's an option about adding the passes to Passbook.

Again, those were the steps roughly involved with the older version of the app. I don't know how the newer app has changed them, if at all.

One final note, mentioned in my previous post: it seems as if the passes need to be manually deleted from Passbook. My last flight was about two weeks ago, and the passes are still accessible from Passbook. I think that this is a good thing, but I figure it's worth mentioning. Wouldn't want people panicking because they open Passbook to see if their flight tickets are accessible, only to find the tickets from the previous flights in there and then panic in thinking that the program messed up and just gave them the previous tickets