This Simple But Effective Flying Hack Will Make Your Air Travel Infinitely Better

For many people air travel can be a very overwhelming experience. Paying attention to your flight announcements and finding out your boarding gate can be bothersome at a busy airport. Now a former airline worker has shared a hack that will allow travelers to get consolidated and verified information about their flight in just one click. With this hack, one will not have to shift through their airline’s website for the current updates on their flight status or stay glued to the information screens at the airport. The hack was shared by a TikTok user named Darby, who has worked in the aviation industry for over three years. She often shares useful travelling hacks with her 2.6 lakh TikTok followers. Her recent air travel advice went viral with over seven million views.

Darby told her followers that every airline has a code such as Delta Airline uses DL. On the day of the flight, one should text their flight number prefixed with the airline code. She described this act as, “The morning of your flight, you’re going to text yourself your flight number. The key is you have to include your airline code, for example, if I’m flying American Airlines Flight 686, I’m gonna type AA 686.”

Darby said that one can also send this airline number to the person who will come to pick you up from the airport. What happens when a person sends this code via text is that the code automatically becomes a link to the airline’s website that directs you to the flight’s live updates. This link will take you to a webpage that will list all details such as if the flight is on time, what time it departed when it is arriving, what is the check-in gate, and what is the luggage belt number. This small link becomes an all-information point regarding the said flight.

The information on this link is always up to date. This way, one does not have to scan different web pages or pay heed to airport announcements. Darby said that while she used this hack for American flights, it works for international ones as well. If you have a connecting flight then you can keep track of both flights by sharing both flight numbers via text. She described this trick as her ‘number one flying hack’ and concluded by saying, “I never have to look at the screens in the airport anymore.”