Everyone I talk to who traveled by plane recently had to mention how their flight was canceled at least twice and the horrors associated with planning around that. While that's terrible, this sort of headache for passengers is creating an interesting opportunity for airlines.
Most airlines communicate cancelations and flight changes via their apps, making them indispensable for flying. And the more people flying, the more downloads we're seeing.
Monthly downloads of the most popular airlines in the US, which include Delta, JetBlue, American, United, Southwest, and Spirit, rose 320% since 2021, according to our estimates. The group went from 1.4 million downloads in January of 2021 to 5.9 million in June of 2022.
And to compare apples to apples, June of 2021 saw 3 million downloads, still about half of this year.
While many of those downloads resulted in more anger than excitement, the download opens a channel to those customers, which airlines can leverage in the future using a variety of incentives to drum up more travel business. Once things get better, that is.
December saw a curious split: downloads dropped 2% while revenue sat at $1.3B. ChatGPT and TikTok dominated both charts as the mobile industry enters a new maturity phase.
Wall Street bet $2 billion on Polymarket, and downloads surged 1,172% in December. The prediction market banned in 2022 is now where Wall Street looks for signals.