If you are a frequent flyer, you have probably developed some kind of strategy to make checking in to your flights while on the go somewhat bearable. But mobile travel app Worldmate, which was acquired by Carlson Wagonlit Travel last year, now makes it a snap to check in to your flights in a few seconds.
The service notifies you when you can check in to flights and uses the trip info you’ve already imported into the app to pre-populate many of the fields for the most popular airlines. For now, this feature is only available in the iOS app (both the free and $9.99 Gold version), but WorldMate CEO Amir Kirshenboim told me it’s soon coming to the company’s Android app, too.
The cool thing about the feature is that WorldMate developer Alon Tidhar, who built the first version of this tool during his 20 percent time at the company, found a way to combine the native iOS interface with the airlines’ web-based check-in pages so you can drag and drop information from a small sidebar menu directly into the check-in form. Given the arcane numbers you usually have to type into these forms, that can easily shave a few minutes off the usual process.
While WorldMate could obviously hand code support for the most popular sites, this drag-and-drop tool now allows the company to support every web-based check-in form.
Here is what this looks like in practice:
As Kirshenboim told me, the company surveyed its users recently, and a basic version of the check-in tool — which the company launched quietly a few weeks ago to test this feature — is already among the most popular features in the app. The drag-and-drop menu the company is adding now, however, takes this a bit further.
WorldMate, it’s worth noting, is still very much in charge of developing its own apps and making deals with third-party travel services, even after the acquisition. Carlson Wagonlit, Kirshenboim told me, gives the company a lot of freedom and the resources to continue to build out its apps to fulfill its mission to become “the ultimate virtual travel assistant.”