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AutoPilot should be with you on your next trip

by Mel Martin Oct 7th 2009 at 5:30PM

USA Today has released AutoPilot for the iPhone and iPod touch, and it looks like a winner. This free app [iTunes link] lets you plan your trip, informs you of flight delays, gives you quick links to hotel, rental car and airline phone numbers, gets you the weather for your destination, and pulls up Flickr photos of where you are going. Whew!

There are lots of other travel apps, but I think AutoPilot has hit all the highlights of useful information that people will want in one place.

The app even reminds you to check in for your flight, and allows you to email your itinerary to others. If you need to quickly call your hotel or your airline, all that information is there. You can tap on a phone number and the call gets made, or you can save the info to contacts. You can also click on a URL and go to a hotel, airline or rental car website

I put in some suggested trips, and everything worked very well except for flights with connections. Each flight had to be entered one at a time. I'd have preferred to be able to enter all the flights at once by typing in flight numbers separated, for example, by a comma.

The app integrates with Tripit, so if you have an account there it can pick up your flight information. Tripit, by the way, has an excellent iPhone app [iTunes link] as well.

Everything else about this app worked very well. There are ads at the bottom of the screen, but I did not find them distracting or obtrusive.

Having the flight tracker is very nice when you are meeting friends at the airport, and the information appeared up to date. The app was developed by Mercury Intermedia, the same firm that did the excellent USA Today [iTunes link] app. It's very slick and reliable for a version 1.0.

I can't think of any reason why a traveler wouldn't want to try this app out. I'm thinking about making a trip I don't even need to go on, just for the experience.

One other suggestion I'd make. The app shouldn't be limited to just air travel. If I'm driving somewhere, I'd still like the ability to define a trip, have the hotel and weather information and the destination galleries available for me, and maybe add some points of interest whether I'm driving or flying.

Check out the gallery for screen shots of AutoPilot in action:


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USA Today has released AutoPilot for the iPhone and iPod touch, and it looks like a winner. This free app [iTunes link] lets you plan your...
 

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22 Comments

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Mercury Intermedia

We worked with USA Today on AutoPilot and apologize for the issues some of you have been having. An update is now available in the store which resolves several of the problems reported here.

We were having TripIt crashes because of how we were handling some of the imported TripIt data server side. With TripIt's help, we were able to resolve that issue. The 90 day window to add flights to a trip has also been fixed. The time period has now been extended to one year. Many additional improvements and bug fixes have been made as well.

We are dedicated to making the app great and will continue to improve it and add new features. If you have any issues or feature requests, don't hesitate to contact us via the app landing page at http://www.usatoday.com/iphone/autopilot/ or through the app itself.

October 14 2009 at 3:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Louie

AutoPilot will not load my driving trip today. And will load & display only my next 3 trips (which have flights). My other trips are in 2010, and they don't have flights booked yet.

The trip title is not fully displayed, and the ampersand is displayed as "&" rather than "&".

It's got a long way to go do replacing any of my dedicated apps, especially the one directly from TripIt.

October 09 2009 at 2:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff

The software doesn't let you enter data for any flight after January 5th. That's a show-stopper.

October 08 2009 at 5:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff

The software doesn't allow you to enter any dates past January 5th. Thats a show-stopper.

October 08 2009 at 5:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mystic

Their news app was great as well (tons better than CNN and FREE!). They have some talented iPhone developers over there at USA Today.

October 08 2009 at 11:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Mystic's comment
Maxwell

I agree about the news app, but AutoPilot is not remotely close to that level of quality.

October 08 2009 at 2:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John

"I can't think of any reason why a traveler wouldn't want to try this app out. I'm thinking about making a trip I don't even need to go on, just for the experience."

I can't either, accept that you have to live in the USA to use it!

October 08 2009 at 9:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rene van den Abeelen

TUAW offers the possibility to filter the iPhone posts. I would love it if there was the same thing for posts that are 'U.S. only' or something like that. It's a little bit frustrating to read about all that software, giveaways and so on when you're born on the wrong spot on the planet.

October 08 2009 at 4:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Rene van den Abeelen's comment
Scott Earle

I agree wholeheartedly. I for one am fed up with the amount of iPhone coverage that is actually about AT&T, which is apparently a phone company on the other side of the planet to me.

October 08 2009 at 8:02 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Maxwell

I cannot say anything about TripIt synchronization, but otherwise this app is incredibly lame and difficult to use. After creating a trip (name and purpose), to add a flight you will need the airline, flight number, date, and departure and arrival cities. You can search for these with partial flight info in the app, but you need all of them to add a flight to a trip. (And, by the way, there is no way to add a flight to a trip from the search tab.) Now, let's say you have added the first flight to a trip and want to add the second one. You can search again, but AutoPilot refuses to let you search any farther in the future than the date of your last flight. So much for a return flight.
But say you have managed to get two flights added to your trip. The trip screen then shows you ONLY the first flight in your trip. You cannot see the second flight on this screen, not by scrolling down, not by sweeping to the side, nada. What you see in the TUAW screen shot above is all you get. The only ways to see the second trip are to (1) edit the trip and flight - and then you will not see the times of the flights, only the day, or (2) choose "mail itinerary": and see an email message with all the information that SHOULD be shown on the trip screen. Bogus. Did anyone at USA Today actually test this with real users before dumping it in the App Store? Even at free, it's overpriced.

October 08 2009 at 12:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yigal Arens

Well, I installed this thing on my iPhone 3GS, and while it claims I'm logged into TripIt, and while TripIt's site shows AutoPilot as a permitted user of my data, no TripIt data is getting downloaded. No idea why, or what to do about it.

October 07 2009 at 8:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
5 replies to Yigal Arens's comment
George

Of course it isn't available in the Canadian app store....

It must not be international flight friendly.

It's from usa today, so I can almost forgive them for forgetting about the rest of the world.

October 07 2009 at 7:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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