United App Now Lets You Check Star Alliance Flight Status

Already my favorite airline app, the United Airlines mobile app now allows you to check on the flight status of Star Alliance carriers beyond United and its codeshares. But the technology is still a work in progress.

In terms of interface and ease of use, the new Star Alliance flight status search function is very easy: just navigate to the flight status section of the app, choose the Star Alliance carrier you wish to check, then enter the flight number or the route.

Click on the Star Alliance logo and you’ll see a drop-down list of every Star Alliance carrier:

Once you choose your flight, you’ll see info that looks like this:

You can even pull up flight status from the previous two days to see if a flight landed on-time, early, or late:

But as you can see, information is limited at this point. The lack of gate info diminishes the value of this information if you are using this to connect from a United flight to a partner flight.

It’s a work in progress, though. I’m told to be patient as United further develops the functionality of this tool within the app.

In a Dream World…

Imagine this. You can pull up any Star Alliance flight on the United app and view detailed flight status including waitlists and seat maps. If you are on partner flight–even if on a different ticket–you can change seats or request an upgrade just by entering your confirmation code.

We are not there yet. Not even close. But this new technology reveals the potential to offer consumers an alliance-wide product that truly reduces hassles and streamlines the travel experience.

I’ve mentioned before that Star Alliance is developing several helpful new tools for travelers. One of them is partner seat assignments. I’m optimistic that we can one day see even more functionality not just on the United app, but on all Star Alliance mobile apps.