Review: Qantas Apple Watch app

With a new Apple Watch strapped to his wrist and a Qantas flight booked for the weekend, AusBT contributor Shaun Ewing put the Qantas Apple Watch app through its paces.

The Qantas Apple Watch app works as a companion to the airline's iPhone app, with the notion of providing key flight information when you need it.

Like most Apple Watch apps, this information can be displayed as a single-screen view or 'glance', such as how long before your flight boards.

Opening the app reveals additional detail on the same 'topic':

This included flight duration, travel class and suggested which lounge I could use (based on my travel class and Qantas Frequent Flyer status).

When boarding started for my flight, this alert popped up on the Apple Watch. Obviously, the data feed for the gate number needs a little work...

The 'time to boarding' disappears once boarding has commenced – this might be more useful if the display changed to 'Now boarding' or similar.

After the flight arrived in Sydney, my Apple Watch displayed this 'welcome' glance from the Qantas app.

Disappointingly, this didn't show useful information such as the baggage carousel for the flight.

The Qantas Frequent Flyer status screen inside the app doesn't tell you anything useful either.

Some other Apple Watch apps are also in their infancy: for example, the Tripit app was quite glitchy and didn’t even show all of our travel plans, although the notifications work well.

Also read: Five must-have Apple Watch apps for the business traveller

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Shaun Ewing

A 'cloud computing' engineer by day and an aficionado of good food and wine on a 24x7 basis, Shaun's travel habits earned him the nickname "Mr Business Class" from his colleagues. Of course, they're all just jealous.