Home Innovation Mobile Applications United Airlines adds new mobil...

United Airlines adds new mobile app features to enhance real-time travel experience

Mobile Applications

The Business Honor: United Airlines Enhances App

Business Honor
17 December, 2025

Virtual Gate, club recommendations and live tracking aim to simplify journeys for passengers.

United Airlines has introduced a host of new capabilities within its award-winning mobile app, designed to save its customers time and make their journey smoother. The new features are expected to ensure real-time information, customized assistance, as well as transparency during the entire travel, as offered by the world's largest carrier.

One of the most interesting new features is “Virtual Gate,” through which customers are given real-time boarding information on their mobile device. “Customers are able to see what boarding groups are boarding at any given time and see progress through a progress bar. Another new feature is ‘United Club Recommendation,’ through which customers are given recommendations on available United Clubs nearest or best positioned to their gate assignment based on proximity and available capacity. Information on available capacity is first being rolled out at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 2024, with expansion in 2026.”

United has also enhanced its luggage status tracking capability with a tracker similar to that used for package deliveries, which provides real-time information about the bag's status during the journey. It now offers customized notifications on stroller or wheelchair assistance for passengers, reminders for documents needed for travel, and biometric boarding when available.

New arrival functionalities include live local weather information, estimated times of arrival, and step-by-step guides to connect to ride-sharing programs from airports. Such developments are made possible by AI-enabled navigation systems that predict customers' needs to customize apps.

With United seeing more than 84% of its passengers using the app on their travel days, the airline states that the enhanced features would be arriving ahead of its busiest winter holiday season in which they would be serving more than 10 million customers. The features would be available from now onwards.