PORTLAND, OR, United States – As a flier of multiple airlines, I ‘ve come to appreciate all that mobile technology has brought to the travel industry. In particular, I appreciate my mobile making life easier for me as I hit the jetways.

With my mobile, I can avoid having to wait in check-in lines, know about my current flight status, and not have to print out boarding passes.

So, which apps should Nokia Lumia owners know about when it comes to flying and Windows Phone? 

Delta Airlines’ Fly Delta: Delta is now the United States’ largest airline. Luckily for us who regularly travel on Delta, the company has built a very capable Windows Phone app that eases the hectic travel process on many fronts. With Fly Delta, users can track their baggage at all points, even during your flight. If you’ve ever tracked a package on UPS and watched it go from city to city, the process is the same for your baggage.

In addition to being able to check-in to your flight, you can also use mobile boarding passes in airports which support them. The apps’ flight management tools will allow you to re-book canceled and misconnected flights, view/change your seat and check your status on the upgrade/standby list.

 

British Airways: The British Airways application features many of the flight management tools that the Delta app brings, but this application is tailored for flyers who frequent British Airways.  Again, with the BA application, users can get mobile boarding passes, saving time and hassle on their next flight.

BA customers will also love the ability to track any late planes by showing live departure times, gate numbers at Heathrow Terminal 5 and the ability to view terminal maps for airports across the globe.

One unique Windows Phone aspect to the British Airways application is the ability to pin a Live Tile to boarding passes to the Lumia homescreen. Your booking information can auto-update every 30 minutes in the case of a delayed flight, this would be valuable information should you have a delay caused by weather or other factors.

 

FlightAware: FlightAware gives you much needed information on any flight, no matter which carrier it’s on. This free application allows you to see real-time flight status for a airline flights worldwide and private flights in the United States and Canada. You can search for flights by aircraft registration number, route, airline flight number, city pair codes or airport codes.

The awesome views show full-screen maps with complete flight details. Weather geeks will love that you can overlay the NEXRAD radar on the maps to see where weather-related flight delays may occur.

 

TripIt: TripIt is an amazing cloud-based tool that will help your organize all your online travel arrangements. Tripit allows you to simply forward all your travel reservations including flights, car, hotels, rail and anything else to be organized and available in one simple application.

TripIt, in addition to the tools mentioned above, will allow you to track flights and see gate changes or delays, which is a huge benefit when you’re on the way to the airport.

 

 Photo credit: eisenbahner, JoshuaDavisphotography