iOS 26’s enhanced boarding passes have finally arrived – here’s how they work

• United Airlines now supports iOS 26's enhanced boarding passes
• That means you can see a flight tracker and airport map from the boarding pass in Apple Wallet
• More airlines are expected to support these features soon

iOS 26 landed recently, and it brought a whole load of upgrades to your iPhone, including a new Liquid Glass interface design. But one of the promised upgrades wasn’t actually available at launch, as it required airlines to get on board.

We’re talking, of course, about the new boarding pass features in Apple Wallet, and now (via 9to5Mac), United Airlines has finally embraced these helpful tools.

If you add a United boarding pass to Apple Wallet in iOS 26, you’ll have more than just the boarding pass itself – you’ll also be able to press a button on it to add a flight tracker to your lock screen, showing things like the time remaining on your flight and the departure or arrival gate.

Plus, there’s also the option to share the flight tracker with friends and family members, in which case they’ll see the same information on their lock screen, aside from your seat number and boarding group.

Airport maps and luggage tracking

These new enhanced boarding passes can also display an airport map, and can show the location of any luggage that has an AirTag tracker.

So, these are some handy features, and while many airline apps already offer flight trackers, others don’t, and having them all in one centralized location (the Apple Wallet) could be useful regardless.

Of course, you still need the airline to support these features, and right now that means you can only access them on United. However, Apple has said that Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue, Jetstar, Lufthansa, Qantas, Southwest, and Virgin Australia will also add support before long. Hopefully, other airlines will follow suit, but that remains to be seen.

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