What's that old saying? Better late than never?
American Airlines on Wednesday launched new push notifications through its smartphone app when boarding begins for a flight. Users with the American app will get automatically notified when boarding commences for their flight.
Now boarding: you
Starting today, you’ll receive boarding notifications from the app when traveling! pic.twitter.com/BMXqi8qELw
— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) October 16, 2019
Both Delta and United have had this function for several years. And there are a handful of third-party travel-planning apps that will notify you when boarding begins, as well as alert you to any schedule or gate changes automatically.
Still, this is a good development – especially for an airline that has struggled with getting flights out on time.
Seventy-five percent of American's flights in August arrived on time in August and the airline canceled a whopping 2.9% of its flights, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Though that on-time performance is a major improvement from the 70.4% of American flights arriving on time in June, it still lags other, better-performing carriers like Delta.
Bottom Line
Though long overdue, this is a positive addition to American's app.