I thought I would start doing posts on app updates for travel providers when they present a substantial new feature. If you are like me, you may not auto-update your smartphone apps since not every update may be a true update for certain features. Hopefully, these posts will help you to know what you might be missing in the latest app updates.
New Mobile App Updates: American Airlines and National Add New Features
American Airlines App Update
Update Date: April 3, 2018 | Version 5.60 | iOS Version
If you have ever traveled with people on the same reservation but without their own cell phones, you know how annoying it has been with American Airlines and their mobile boarding passes. This would be mostly concerning families, I would imagine. We flew American Airlines a few times in February and it constantly frustrated me that the AA mobile app only would allow you to get your own boarding pass.
The new AA app update lets you get up to 9 boarding passes for passengers in your trip – finally!
Yes, I know, the others can be printed but that kind of ruins the point of the mobile boarding pass. Fortunately, American Airlines has now updated their app to allow up to 9 passengers on the same reservation to receive boarding passes in the app. Great news!
They have also updated it to allow you to scan your passport instead of having to manually enter the information.
Thanks, AA! Nice updates!
National Car Rental App Update
Update Date: April 2, 2018 | Version 3.10.0 | iOS Version
National Car Rental has added a couple of little updates to their latest update which can help make the whole process of booking reservations and checking older ones easier.
National has now included the ability to check your toll charges – in the app. I almost always use the National app for everything National-related so the ability to pull up those toll charges from past rentals is a nice update.
New National Car Rental app updates let you bring up old toll receipts in app as well as identifying your credit cards with little logos
Also, they have now given new logos for each credit card company. Not a huge deal but if you have multiple credit cards in your profile, being able to give a quick glance at the logo to select the right one (say, a Chase card with primary rental insurance) is helpful. Also, you have been able to nickname them as well.
I call the first part a nice update and the logo part just a little something nice – but a good update nonetheless!
I have not yet checked these updates with Android – let me know if you see similar updates to these apps there!
National also added a new feature that allows you to scan your key fob or other bar code to save time at the checkout lane for Execs and Emerald Aisle folks. I don’t know that it’s a big deal but it does seem to save a little time. Not sure if this has hit IOS but it is on the Android version that I use.