If you're here, you probably know the story. On October 19, 2024, App in the Air shut down. No acquisition, no successor app, no migration path — one day the app that had logged your flights for years simply stopped working. If you didn't export your data before the lights went out, it was gone.
That was more than twenty months ago, and something strange happened in the meantime: nobody rebuilt what made App in the Air different.
What App in the Air actually got right
There have always been flight trackers. What App in the Air understood — and what none of its successors picked up — is that frequent flyers don't just want information about their flights. They want credit for them.
The badges. The stats that stacked up year over year. The little jolt of landing in a new country and watching your map fill in. App in the Air treated your travel history as something you'd built, not just a list of confirmation numbers. For a lot of us, opening the app after a trip was part of the trip.
When it died, the apps that absorbed its users — Flighty, TripIt, and the rest — are genuinely good at what they do. But they compete on utility: live tracking, delay alerts, itinerary management. The game layer, the part that made logging flights feel like collecting something, just vanished from the category.
Where Row1 comes in
Row1 turns your real flights into a game: import your flight history from Flighty, Flightradar24, or your calendar, earn XP, collect 304 badges, and share an animated 3D-globe Wrapped video of your year in the sky.
It launched in July 2026, and it is built squarely for the hole App in the Air left behind. The core loop will feel familiar: log a flight, earn XP, unlock badges — 304 of them, covering aircraft types, airports, routes, milestones, and the kind of obscure achievements you'll want to plan a trip around. Leaderboards let you defend your home routes against friends. And at the end of the year (or any time you want), Row1 renders your flying into a Wrapped video — an animated 3D globe tracing every route you flew, ready to share.
"But my App in the Air data is gone"
This is the painful part, and we won't pretend otherwise. App in the Air offered a data export before shutdown, and if you grabbed one, hold onto it. If you didn't, there's no server to ask anymore.
The good news: your flight history isn't really gone, because App in the Air was never the only place it lived. It's in your email, your calendar, your frequent flyer accounts, and your Flightradar24 profile. We wrote a full guide to digging all of it out — How to find every flight you've ever taken — and Row1 is built to swallow what you find: it imports from Flighty, from Flightradar24, from your calendar, and from forwarded booking emails. Most people can reconstruct years of flying in an afternoon, and honestly, the archaeology is half the fun. You will find flights you forgot you took.
Honest comparison
| App in the Air (2012–2024) | Row1 (2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Shut down October 19, 2024 | Live on the App Store |
| Flight logbook | Yes | Yes |
| Badges & achievements | Yes | Yes — 304 badges |
| XP & progression | Yes | Yes |
| Leaderboards | Limited | Yes — King of the Route, with friends |
| Year in review | Stats summary | Wrapped: animated 3D-globe video |
| Import old flights | From email | Flighty, Flightradar24, calendar, email |
| Live flight tracking | Yes | No — Row1 is a logbook and a game, not a tracker |
| Auto check-in & trip utilities | Yes | No |
| Your data if the app dies | Lost (unless exported) | Your history stays importable/exportable |
| Price | Subscription required for most features | Free to download and log flights; optional Elite for deeper stats |
Two rows there deserve emphasis, because an honest comparison page should say what a product doesn't do. Row1 does not track flights live, and it won't check you in or watch your seat assignment. If you want a tool that pings you when your inbound aircraft is delayed, use a dedicated tracker alongside Row1 — they stack nicely, and Row1 will happily import from them. What Row1 replaces is the part of App in the Air nobody else rebuilt: the game.
Why this category stayed empty for 20 months
Building a flight logbook is easy. Building 304 badges worth earning, a progression system that respects real-world flying, and a year-in-review people actually want to share is slow, unglamorous work — and the big players had no reason to do it, because their businesses are built on live tracking and itinerary management. So the gamified-flight-app category has had exactly one entrant since October 2024. That's not a marketing line; go look.
If you've been keeping your flights in a spreadsheet since App in the Air died — and a remarkable number of people have — this is the app that spreadsheet was waiting for.
Get started
Download Row1 from the App Store, import what you have (Flighty export, FR24 CSV, or just point it at your calendar), and watch the badges land. If your history is scattered, start with the flight-history guide.
There's no indication it will. App in the Air shut down on October 19, 2024, with no migration path, and the service has been offline since. Its website and apps no longer function.
Not directly today. If you saved an App in the Air export before the shutdown, keep it — and in the meantime, Row1 imports flight history from Flighty, Flightradar24, your calendar, and forwarded booking emails, which together usually recover the same flights.
No. Row1 is a flight logbook and a game — it's about the flights you've taken, not the plane in the air right now. Many Row1 users run a dedicated live tracker alongside it and import from there.
Yes — 304 of them, covering aircraft, airports, routes, distances, and milestones, plus XP and leaderboards.
Row1 is free to download and free to log flights, earn badges, and share your Wrapped video. An optional Elite subscription unlocks deeper stats.
Your flights still exist in your email, calendar, frequent flyer accounts, and Flightradar24 profile. Our guide, "How to find every flight you've ever taken," walks through each source, and Row1 imports the results. ---