Former airline employee reveals a simple time-saving hack to be followed the morning of a flight

As much as traveling by plane saves us time, the hassles of navigating the airport often drive us up the wall. Even if we reach the airport hours earlier, the chaos of finding our check-in gate, baggage claim belt or a prospective delay in flight is almost inevitable. So, to help people have a hassle-free airport experience, former airline employee Darby shared a simple yet effective hack on TikTok and people are here for it. It may be just an effortless thing to do the morning of one's flight, but Darby claims that it always saved a ton of time for her.

Darby began by saying that PreCheck, a popular program by the Transportation Security Administration in the U.S. that makes the security screening process smoother by eliminating the need to remove shoes, laptops, 3-1-1 liquids, belts or light jackets, is a great flying hack. However, since most passengers know about this obvious hack, she revealed something that many don't know about. "The morning of your flight, you're going to text yourself your flight number," said Darby, adding that one has to include their airline code in the text. "If I'm flying American Airlines Flight 686, I'm gonna type AA686. Delta is gonna be DL and Alaskan is AS."

The ex-airline employee mentioned that if we have someone to pick us up at the destination, it would also help to send this number to them. In case we are taking an Uber, we can text it to ourselves. "That text will become a link to tell you everything you need to know about your flight and it will update in real time," Darby said. We don't need to be concerned about which gate we are about to check in while going through the security check. Simply clicking the link will direct us to the gate number and this link keeps updating itself with current information of the flight. To give the viewers a clearer idea, Darby showed an example by texting herself flight numbers and demonstrating how they turned into a link that contained all the necessary information about the flight. 

Darby emphasized how that link gets updated with possible delays which would be of great help to the person who is picking you up at the destination. "It's the greatest hack. I never had to look at the screens in the airport anymore," she said. This hack works well for connecting flights too. "If you have a connecting flight, text yourself both flights," said Darby and added, "The second you land, you can just click your link and know exactly what your gate is. So when you get off the plane, Bing! You're off to your connection." This little-known hack got many curious on the internet and Darby's video went viral with over 11 million views.

"Yes, I do this every time! Except I text my sibling instead of myself haha. And they do the same," commented @jordyneski. "I have a fear of flying but I’m concurring it in a couple months when I have to fly home alone. This is going to save my life," wrote @hannabis1994. "Didn’t even know about texting yourself! Must look into that too. Thanks so much for the tip!" commented @vicmoserbeauty.