This article is written by Adish Jain, who is a geek, gamer and travel and music enthusiast.

Who says booking air tickets and keeping an eye on the flight status can only be done by sitting in from of a PC with an internet connection? Those were in the pre-application era where the world was restricted to a big monitor. Today, applications have changed the way we live by pushing all this and more, to the small display on our smartphones. Listed below are a few apps that will let you book flight tickets and track real time flight status from anywhere, anytime.

Kayak: Booking flights has never been so simple. This app has an intuitive interface that lets you choose from round-trip, one-way or multi-city. Capable of automatically detecting the location and the nearest airport, it allows you to choose the destination by typing the city’s name. It works well with domestic as well as international locations and is just like an online web portal where you can select your preferences – exact date, flight cabin (economy, premium, business, first), non-stop journey and number of passengers. The search lists various flights along with the travel fair, airline, departure and arrival time. And while viewing details, you can always book the flight simply by calling the listed vendor. (Available for iOS, Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Phone).

Skyscanner: As the name suggests, this app dedicatedly searches through the numerous flights and comes up with the cheapest options available. The neat layout allows users to select the departure city and arrival city from the drop down menu along with the date. There is one touch option to select the return as well as the non-stop flight. This quickly comes up with plenty of flight details along with the air-fair in Indian currency. The search can be sorted using airline, duration, and landing as well as take off signages. It does store the latest search history and lets you share the information over email. (Available for iOS and Android).

MakemyTrip: This is one name you will be familiar with. Coming from makemytrip.com, this application is available only for BlackBerry smartphone owners. Similar to the web interface, it performs various tasks smoothly, from booking flights on the move to cancel tickets, get e-tickets and track refund. Checking flight status is also enabled on this application. While using the app, you can search for the latest travel deals along with the nearby places to eat. (Available for BlackBerry OS).

Flight Aware: We don’t just always end up booking flights but tend to keep an eye on the departure-arrival time when someone known is travelling. The FlightAware app is designed for such a situation. It lets you track the flight using your flight number and tail number. In case, you have none, you can always search through origin and destination. Regular travellers can save preferences including my aircraft, my airport, etc. Using the current location, you can view the nearby aircrafts flying and mobile push notifications which would give details such as estimated departure time, departure and arrival notices and gate/terminal assigned. (Available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone).

Airline Applications: Catching up with this trend, some of the leading airlines too have come up with their very own mobile applications. This includes American Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa, British Airways, AirAsia, Singapore Airlines and Fly Delta to name a few. These are available on download from the respective applications stores. Most of these are available for Apple iPhone and Android smartphnes but a few of them are also compatible with the BlackBerry and Symbian operating systems.

Adish Jain

10 Oct 2011

http://travel.hindustantimes.com/travel-stories/download-your-very-own-travel-appssistant.php

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