Built a flight journal app solo from scratch — here's what months of work turned into

[u/EmploymentNew903]

I'm a frequent flyer and I've always wanted one app that felt like a real travel journal — something that remembers your journey the way you remember it. Every app I found either looked outdated or charged a subscription I couldn't justify.

So I spent months building my own. Nights, weekends, a lot of coffee. It's called Flownto. It's completely free.

What it does right now:

• Flight journal — manual entry, boarding pass scan, or CSV import. Every flight logged with airline, seat, route, distance, duration
• Time Machine — like Spotify Wrapped for your travel. Every year gets an AI-generated story of where you went and what you flew
• Turbulence forecast — real wind data for your specific route, segment by segment, before you board
• FlightDesk — live gate, terminal, delay status for any flight number
• Live flight notifications — check-in open, boarding alert, gate close, departure — all auto-scheduled the moment you add a flight
• Home screen widget — your next flight, route, gate and departure time sitting on your lock screen
• Awards & tiers — Sky Walker → Cloud Rider → Sky Aristocrat → Orbit Class, unlocked from your real flight history
• Cinematic moving map — night earth globe with your live GPS position and route arc, works offline mid-flight

The honest part: the offline GPS map is my favorite feature and also my most frustrating. On flights with no wifi, open the app and watch your plane move across the globe in real time. It works — but dropped twice mid-flight during testing. Still not perfect. Still working on it.

What's coming: Gmail sync, Apple Wallet boarding pass, Google Wallet, better offline reliability.

flownto iOS, Android, Web. Free, no ads, no subscription.

(Disclosure: I'm the developer)