iPhone ‘App’ Of The Week : EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge

Web: www.stevenfrischling.com — E-Mail: fish@flyingwithfish.com

03/09/2009 – iPhone ‘App’ Of The Week : EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge

This week’s iPhone App of the Week is a radical departure from the traditional iPhone App’s that airline are releasing. This week’s airline based iPhone App doesn’t let flyers check flights, book travel, check frequent flyer awards…you can’t even check up on flight status…so what’s the point?

This week’s iPhone App of the Week is EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge.

EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge is designed to give travellers something to do in-flight, so flip your iPhone into “Airplane Safe Mode,” sit back and be prepared to test your geography skills, learn new geography and learn whether you have ‘fat fingers’ or not.

I played EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge once, thought it was fun, made some screen shots, then found myself going back and playing it two or thee times a day. Why would I play this seemingly simple iPhone App two or three times a day? Simple, I wanted to find out how much geography I knew and how accurately I knew it!

While playing EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge a city pops up on the screen and lets you know how much time you have to locate the city. Once you click “play” you are faced with an essentially ‘blank’ map’ where you must envision cities and countries. For example I know where London is, but when I click the screen I end up 25km (15-miles) from the city its self; Lyon pops up, my finger lands me 42km (26-miles) from Lyon. The closer you get to the actual location the better your score. At first 42km from Lyon, on a map that offers essentially no reference points seems pretty good, but the more you play it, the more you want to be as accurate as possible.

This game is excellent for travellers; it is very educational for kids as well! We live in a small world, and I am often shocked at the number of travellers I meet who when discussing world travel cannot place the city they are headed to on a map. I may be biased, but I find geography incredibly important…and EasyJet has created a fun, addicting, education iPhone App to help pass the time at the gate and on the plane that furthers a vital understanding of the world we live in.

Flight’s late? See if you can find Andorra or Monaco, to within 10km of these tiny countries and time will just fly by!

Below are six screen shots from my iPhone of EasyJet’s Traveller Challenge iPhone App.

Happy Flying!