One of the most important ways to eliminate travel stress is the use of a Travel Management application. These applications not only help you keep track of the details of your itinerary, they can be extremely valuable in finding seats, staying abreast of flight activity, searching alternative flights, and keeping friends & family in-the-loop.
A couple of notes: Flighty is only available for the iPhone, and focuses solely on managing flights, while TripIt is much broader, has both a website and application, and makes it easy to import from almost any source (airlines, hotels, restaurants) via email.
Flighty
Flighty is hands down one of the best flight-tracking apps available today—and easily one of my most-used travel tools. While it doesn’t help you book flights with points, it excels at something just as important: knowing exactly what’s happening with your flight, often before the airline tells you. Flighty pulls real-time data from FAA, airline, and airport systems to deliver incredibly fast alerts on delays, gate changes, aircraft swaps, and cancellations. In many cases, Flighty notifications arrive minutes—sometimes hours—before official airline app updates. For frequent travelers, especially those with tight connections, that speed is invaluable. The interface is clean, intuitive, and beautifully designed. You can track upcoming trips, past flights, aircraft types, tail numbers, and even build a personal flight history that aviation geeks will love. Premium features unlock deeper insights like delay probabilities, inbound aircraft tracking, and push alerts that feel almost clairvoyant. The biggest limitation is that Flighty is iOS-only, and its premium subscription is best justified by frequent travel. Occasional flyers may not need all its power. Bottom line: If you fly often, value proactive information, and want less airport stress, Flighty is absolutely worth having in your travel toolkit.
TripIt
TripIt is one of those travel tools you don’t realize you need—until you use it once and never travel without it again. At its core, TripIt does one thing extremely well: it organizes your entire trip in one place with almost zero effort. Simply forward your confirmation emails for flights, hotels, car rentals, tours, or even dinner reservations, and TripIt automatically builds a clean, chronological itinerary. For trips involving multiple airlines, connections, or destinations, this alone is a huge stress reducer. No more digging through inboxes at the airport. TripIt Pro adds meaningful upgrades, including real-time flight alerts, gate and terminal changes, seat tracking, and notifications when better seats become available. It can even flag fare drops after booking and suggest alternate flights when disruptions occur—features that frequent travelers will appreciate. The interface is functional rather than flashy, but that’s part of its charm. TripIt focuses on reliability and clarity instead of bells and whistles. It also integrates well with calendars and works seamlessly across devices. Bottom line: TripIt is an excellent “set it and forget it” travel organizer. Whether you travel occasionally or constantly, it brings order to travel chaos and lets you focus on the journey, not the logistics.