Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
AutoPilot should be with you on your next trip
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:
Gallery: AuoPilot from USA Today
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Cris said 5:58PM on 10-07-2009
Looks very promising. I've installed it. I wish you could view past itineraries stored in TripIt. Look forward to using this on my next trip. This along with the TripIt app will come in very handy!
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dave said 6:23PM on 10-07-2009
I guess it's ok for the casual traveler. It certainly doesn't come close to replacing flight tracker. I'm always amazed how many users want one app to rule them all.
I'd rather use tripit, flight tracker, and one of the many location aware apps that give local information. Apps that are more specialized and do one thing very well, instead of one app that does everything half ass, which is what this is.
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Chris said 6:43PM on 10-07-2009
What all apps do you use?
Swimatm said 6:40PM on 10-07-2009
I hope it doesn't have a mind of its own.
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Chris said 6:43PM on 10-07-2009
I made the thing crash by putting in trip to Canada from the US.
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George Kirkaldie said 7:02PM on 10-07-2009
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.
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Yigal Arens said 8:28PM on 10-07-2009
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.
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Gminor said 8:35PM on 10-07-2009
Same here... and I did try all the buttons and menu items
Kim said 1:10PM on 10-08-2009
Same problem here. Logged in to TripIt, authorized, won't pull data and I can't force it.
Drew said 8:15PM on 10-08-2009
Me three. I'm going to stick with my dedicated flight apps and the tripit app. I logged a bug report with them but i'm not expecting anything back.
Louie said 7:11PM on 10-09-2009
I had the same problem, but managed to fix it.
1. Logged out of TripIt from inside AutoPilot.
2. Quit and restart AutoPilot.
3. Log back into TripIt and accept the agreement.
It then automatically imported the trips.
Yigal Arens said 11:15PM on 10-09-2009
Aha! Thanks, Louie. I tried logging out and back in to TripIt before, but I hadn't quit and restarted AutoPilot. Following your suggestion got my TripIt info to load. (I only have one trip there, scheduled for later this month, so I didn't run into any problems associated with trips in the more distant future.)
Maxwell said 12:47AM on 10-08-2009
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.
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René van den Abeelen said 5:03AM on 10-08-2009
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.
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Scott Earle said 8:02AM on 10-08-2009
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.
John said 9:30AM on 10-08-2009
"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!
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Mystic said 11:42AM on 10-08-2009
Their news app was great as well (tons better than CNN and FREE!). They have some talented iPhone developers over there at USA Today.
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Maxwell said 2:30PM on 10-08-2009
I agree about the news app, but AutoPilot is not remotely close to that level of quality.
Jeff said 5:03PM on 10-08-2009
The software doesn't allow you to enter any dates past January 5th. Thats a show-stopper.
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Jeff said 5:07PM on 10-08-2009
The software doesn't let you enter data for any flight after January 5th. That's a show-stopper.
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