American Airlines (finally) rolls out boarding push notifications to all app users
After testing for the past five months, American Airlines is rolling out a new feature to all AA app users: boarding push notifications. Starting today, app users will automatically get a notification when their flight has begun boarding:
The good news is that there's no need to update your AA app to get these notifications. American Airlines confirmed to TPG that the push notifications are now available for both iOS app and Android app users starting October 16 using the current version of the app.
This notification is automatically sent by American Airlines' system after the first boarding pass has been scanned for the flight. So, you're going to get a push notification when boarding actually starts, not just when boarding is scheduled to begin.
That's great for those of us that have lounge access as we can wait until boarding actually begins to head to the gate -- instead of heading to the gate when boarding is supposed to start.
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This is a feature that rival airlines Delta has offered app users for years and United launched in September 2018.
As a beta tester on American Airlines' app, I have gotten an early look at how this works and how it's evolved since AA started testing this new feature in April. When AA first started testing the feature, it included a warning about boarding ending 10 minutes before departure:
Now, American Airlines has swapped out that warning for a notification that helpfully includes the gate number:
TPG's Josh Leibner just so happened to be flying American Airlines today. Sure enough, he received a boarding push notification for his flight to Charlotte:
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Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images