Text2Fly - African Mobiles "speak English" to Check Flight Schedules

Text2Fly is a new way of searching for flight schedules by sending a text message that appears to be an English language sentence. The airline schedules arrive in a few seconds.

Leading commentators have predicted that Africa will be a hot bed of mobile innovation. A new mobile service that lets you check Nigerian flight schedules using plain old Sms proves just that.

Sms is a difficult medium for an application that would normally require lists of cities and other prompts to guide the user. But Text2Fly makes it easy by letting users enter what appears to be an English language sentence for example, "From lagos to abuja on thurdsay at 3pm".

It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Timi Agama, the founder and CEO says "Text2Fly is so simple even your mother can use it. And your flight schedules arrive on your phone in seconds."

This approach to delivering an application by Sms is patented and brand new. In theory it can be applied to searching for train times in London or bus schedules in New York.

Nigeria is the largest economy in West Africa and, with over 5 million domestic seats sold annually, has the most vibrant aviation sector.

However the "simple" task of finding flight schedules in Nigeria is much more difficult than it needs to be. Some people send their driver to get flight schedules from the airline ticketing office, but in a busy city like Lagos a short trip can take an hour in each direction. Others look in newspapers, but the papers only show the current day's flights while Text2Fly lets you search a week ahead. Besides, not all papers carry the Nigerian flight schedules. A further option is to search online, but then you have to go to the web site of every single airline in a country where Internet access is very slow.

Text2Fly is like having a travel agent in your pocket. So to have a little less hassle when you travel, visit text2fly.com.ng to find out more.

Text2Fly is a product of Anthill Digital Limited, a Nigerian provider of innovative web-based solutions.