# How to Vibe Code Your Own Flighty (and Stop Paying for It)

> Get flight alerts faster than the airlines

- Site: https://flighty.com
- Category: Travel & Transportation
- Platforms: iOS app, iPadOS app, macOS app, watchOS app
- Verdict: **Don't bother** (12/100 vibecodeable)
- Estimated effort: 6+ months of full-time work

## Verdict

Keep paying for Flighty because you cannot replicate its proprietary aviation data feeds or commercial pipeline costs on an indie budget.

While a solo developer can spin up a clean SwiftUI interface that looks modern, you hit an absolute brick wall on the data layer. Real-time global flight telemetry, Air Traffic Control ground stops, and 25-hour inbound aircraft tracking require expensive enterprise aviation API contracts (FlightAware/OAG) running into thousands of dollars a month. Furthermore, parsing the endless fragmentation of international airline confirmation email schemas by hand is an endless maintenance nightmare.

### What you can't replicate

- Affordable enterprise-grade global aviation radar and ATC feeds
- Deep historical logbook database and multi-airline email parser edge cases
- Award-winning Apple Design Award level UI/UX execution and animation polish

## What it does

Premium live flight tracking and travel management application designed for frequent flyers with real-time operational data, delay predictions, and native Apple ecosystem integration.

### Core features

- Real-time global flight tracking and status updates
- Inbound aircraft tracking (25 hours prior to departure)
- Air Traffic Control (ATC) integration and delay cause root-casting
- Instant push notifications, Live Activities, and Dynamic Island integration
- Email parsing, calendar sync, and TripIt integration
- Flighty Passport & lifetime analytics (miles, aircraft types, seats)
- Flighty Friends status sharing and land notifications
- Airport Intelligence live performance and TV Mode dashboard

## The business

### Pricing

- Free: $0
- Pay-As-You-Go: $4.99/week
- Unlimited Annual: $59.99/yr
- Lifetime: $299.00

Founded 2019.
Team size: Small boutique indie team.

## The hard parts

- Accessing and paying for commercial aviation feeds, FAA/ATC radar telemetry APIs
- Crafting buttery-smooth native Apple UI/UX with custom vector flight arcs, Dynamic Island, and Live Activities
- Robustly parsing messy, non-standard airline confirmation emails from hundreds of carriers
- Reliable low-latency push notification pipeline that beats airline texts

## How to vibe code Flighty

### Prerequisites

- Mac (Owned hardware): Required to run Xcode and compile native Swift code.
- Xcode (Free): Native IDE for SwiftUI, WidgetKit, and ActivityKit development.
- Apple Developer Account ($99/yr): Required for Push Notifications, Live Activities, and TestFlight distribution.
- Aviation Data API Subscription ($100+/mo): Needed to fetch live flight tracks, schedules, and gate info.

### Recommended AI tools

- Claude Code: Unmatched at architecting complex SwiftUI modules and debugging Swift concurrency.
- Cursor: Ideal for iterative UI styling and fine-tuning SwiftUI views with live visual feedback.
- GitHub: Source control and remote backup for the native Swift codebase.

### Stack

- Frontend: Swift & SwiftUI (Native iOS/macOS App)
- Backend: Node.js (TypeScript) API wrapper hosted on Fly.io
- Database: Turso (SQLite at the edge for offline-first local flight cache)
- Auth: better-auth (Self-hosted user state for passport sync)
- Payments: RevenueCat (In-app purchases for Apple App Store)
- Other: ActivityKit / WidgetKit for Live Activities and Dynamic Island, CoreLocation for airport distance sorting

### Hosting

- Fly.io (Hosting the backend ingestion proxy server for aviation APIs): $5/mo
- Turso (Serverless SQLite database for user passport logs and saved flights): $0/mo

### Build guide

1. **Scaffold Native iOS App & Local Database Architecture** — Initialize a new Swift project targeting iOS 18+ and macOS using SwiftUI, setting up MVVM architecture and Turso/SQLite local storage via SwiftData for offline-first caching of personal flight logs.

```
Create a structured SwiftUI project architecture for an iOS and macOS client named FlightClone. Use SwiftData to model a Flight entity with fields: flightNumber (String), departureAirport (String), arrivalAirport (String), scheduledDeparture (Date), status (String), aircraftType (String), seatNumber (String), and gate (String). Implement a clean MVVM layout with repositories separating local persistence from network fetching.
```

2. **Build Aviation Data Ingestion Backend Proxy** — Create a lightweight Node.js and TypeScript backend service running on Fly.io that normalizes responses from commercial flight tracking APIs into clean JSON payloads for the mobile client.

```
Scaffold a Node.js TypeScript server using Express. Implement an endpoint `/api/flight/:id` that calls an external aviation data provider (e.g., FlightAware AeroAPI), parses the raw JSON payload to extract flight status, inbound aircraft position history, gate changes, and delay predictions, and returns a sanitized response object to the Swift client.
```

3. **Implement SwiftUI Flight Dashboard & Custom Vector Arcs** — Design the main dashboard views featuring clean typography, card layouts, and custom Path shapes to draw route arcs between departure and arrival airports.

```
Build a SwiftUI view representing a flight card with a custom Shape that renders a smooth dashed arc curve between two airport code markers. Include dynamic color styling based on flight status (green for on-time, orange for delayed, red for cancelled). Ensure support for both light and dark mode variants adhering to modern iOS design standards.
```

4. **Integrate ActivityKit & Live Activities for Dynamic Island** — Configure WidgetExtension targets and Live Activities to display real-time countdowns and gate info directly on the iPhone Lock Screen and Dynamic Island.

```
Implement an ActivityKit Live Activity extension for Swift. Define an ActivityAttributes struct containing flightNumber, departureTime, and current gate. Build a Dynamic Island presentation (compact, minimal, and expanded views) and Lock Screen banner view that updates in real-time as flight status changes are pushed from the backend server.
```

5. **Build Flighty Passport & Statistics Logbook** — Create a lifetime statistics view aggregating flown miles, aircraft type frequencies, seat distributions, and airport activity rankings.

```
Build a SwiftUI 'Passport' analytics view that queries local SwiftData records to compute and display total distance flown in miles, distinct countries visited, top 3 most flown aircraft types, and a breakdown of seat selections (Window, Middle, Aisle). Present these metrics in a polished, card-based Bento grid layout.
```

6. **Configure RevenueCat Subscriptions & Paywall UI** — Integrate RevenueCat SDK into Swift to handle freemium entitlements and present a polished paywall sheet for locked features.

```
Integrate the RevenueCat SDK into the iOS app to manage subscription entitlements. Create a Paywall view that displays Monthly ($4.99/mo) and Lifetime ($299) purchase options. Implement purchase flow handlers and lock advanced features like inbound aircraft tracking and calendar sync behind an active 'Pro' entitlement check.
```

### Cost vs paying

**Starting costs (one-time):**

- Apple Developer Account: $99/yr
- Aviation API Initial Credits: $50
- Total: ~$149 one-time

**Ongoing costs (monthly):**

- Fly.io Hosting: $5/mo
- Commercial Aviation Data Feed: $100+/mo
- Total: ~$105/mo

- Paying for the SaaS instead: $4.99/mo ($59.99/yr) or $299 lifetime
- Build time: 120-160 hours
- AI tool credits: $20 (Claude Pro)
- Break-even: Never (costs vastly exceed paying for Flighty)

## Sources

- [Flighty Official Website](https://flighty.com)
- [Apple Developer Case Study: Behind the Design — Flighty](https://developer.apple.com)