Qantas app flies us to “2019” with Mango WP7 app

At the second MIX11 keynote today, there was no better demonstration of a slice of Windows Phone 7’s evolved “Mango” update features for developers and consumers than the upcoming Qantas application.

The Australian airline, who didn’t just want a port of their mobile site, in collaboration with Microsoft challenged themselves to reduce the stress of flying with an experience that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, with glaring similarities to the idealistic “2019” Microsoft vision video.

Developed by local Australian mobile developer Nick Randolph and designer Shane Morris, collaborating remotely across Sydney and Melbourne, the application seen today came together in a matter of just barely three weeks.

The application shines with an array of new Mango features including but not limited to, multiple tiles, double-sided tiles, live agents, deep linking, native alerts and a Bing Maps direction launcher. Expect even more Mango features to be integrated into the application before its release.

Looking back at the 2019 video, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the interactive boarding card is a not too distant future with the Qantas app adapting to whether or not you are at the airport, even providing you an easy way to reschedule the flight if it anticipates you can’t check-in in time.

As a frequent flyer of Qantas on the very route demoed, neither Mango or this app can come soon enough.

24 insightful thoughts

  1. Sorry for nitpicking: “Expect even more Mango features are to be integrated into the application into the application before its release.”

  2. How come the arrow is the wrong way round in the far-right image?
    It’s not possible to achieve this on a current device (or the current emulator), so these were just created in Photoshop (or similar) as opposed to (perhaps) being taken with the new screen-capture tool?

  3. The few missing links would be an ability to Deep Link an flight purchase email from Qantas into an app, and the ability to check in with phone by NFC. Otherwise, the vision is pretty complete way ahead of time. 🙂

  4. @tino,

    That’s because the 3rd part developer used to be a developer evangelist at Microsoft and has probably seen all the development philosophy behind windows Phone very early on in the development.

    I have seen a demo of this yesterday. It’s definitely one of the better Windows Phone 7 apps out there once it gets released and certainly will be one of the better uses of a smart phone.

    Let’s hope they build a platform out of it so every airline on the planet can hock into this rather having to wait for each individual airline getting their shit together.

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