Flight delay and gate change alerts for Android

Every alert FlightDex sends

Alerts come in seven groups. Each group can be switched off on its own, except the first.

Cancellations and diversions

A cancelled flight, or one that is diverted to another airport. These two have no off switch on purpose: an alert you did not want costs one notification, and one you missed can leave you in the wrong city overnight. You can still mute a single flight if you need to.

Delays

The estimated departure slipping, the airline re-timing the flight earlier or later, and a predicted delay. You choose how big a change has to be before you hear about it: 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. The size counts in either direction, so a flight moved an hour earlier reaches you too.

Gates and terminals

The first gate assignment for your departure, a change of departure gate, and a change of departure terminal. A terminal change can mean a different building and a second security queue, so it is treated as the bigger of the two.

Departure

The aircraft leaving the gate or, when no time at the gate is reported, taking off.

Arrival

Landing soon, landed, at the gate, and the baggage belt your bags are coming out on.

Flight plan filed

The airline filing the flight plan. It confirms the flight is going ahead, so it comes without the alert sound.

Aircraft changes

The airline putting a different type of aircraft on your flight before it leaves, for example a Boeing 737-900 where an Airbus A320 was planned. The alert names both. A first aircraft being assigned, a swap for another aircraft of the same type, and anything after pushback send nothing. It is about your own flights only; someone following a flight you shared does not get it. Its own switch comes in the next app update.

Which alerts make a sound

A cancellation, a diversion, a terminal change, a gate change, and a delay or re-timing of 30 minutes or more use FlightDex’s own alert sound, because each of those changes a plan you already had. Everything else, such as a first gate, a landing or the belt, uses your phone’s ordinary notification sound. An app that chimes for good news is an app people end up silencing.

Quiet hours

Turn on quiet hours and pick the window; it starts as 10 PM to 7 AM. During that window alerts are silenced, never dropped: they are in your notification shade when you wake up. Some alerts still ring through: a cancellation or diversion; news from the airport or the air, such as a gate, a departure or a landing; and a delay or re-timing of a flight that leaves before you would be up. A flight somebody shared with you never wakes you; you can read it in the morning.

Delay predictions, labelled as predictions

When the aircraft due to fly your flight is running late on its previous leg, FlightDex can predict a delay to yours before anything official changes. The prediction comes from that one cause, the late inbound aircraft, and it is always shown as a prediction, beside the official times rather than in place of them.

There is no boarding alert, and that is deliberate

The flight data FlightDex receives carries no boarding signal and no boarding time. Rather than guess one from the departure time and present it as fact, the app does not send a boarding alert at all.

What is free and what is Pro

Alerts come from live tracking, which is part of FlightDex Pro: the app watches a Pro flight continuously and pushes each change as it happens. On the free plan, a flight's status is refreshed when you open the app, from 24 hours before departure to landing, and no alert is sent about your own flights. When someone shares a flight with you, following it is free; when the person sharing has Pro, you also get its alerts in the app, whatever your own plan, once your phone allows FlightDex notifications: its departure, takeoff, landing soon, landing, arrival at the gate and any cancellation.