How To Use The FlightAware Tracking App (And How Live Is It?)

Airways has become one of the best modes of transportation these days. It is the fastest way to travel between two states or even two countries. In fact, there are passenger jets like the Bombardier Global 7500, which has a top cruising speed of Mach 0.925, which is incredibly fast. If you take one of these fastest passenger jets, you can cover the distance of around 8,077 miles between Hong Kong and New York in around 16 hours.

That said, it's important to keep real-time details of the flight with which you are going to fly. This will ensure that you're aware of all the details of the flight, like its current location, if it's running late, or even if it has been canceled due to any unforeseen circumstances. You can get all this information and even more on a flight tracking application like FlightAware.

The FlightAware app is available for both Android and iOS. While most of the app features are free to use, there are also two monthly subscription plans — ad remove and aviator. The ad-removal plan costs $0.99 monthly, and as you would expect, it removes all the ads from the app. The Aviator plan, on the other hand, costs $9.99 monthly, and it's for the piston aircraft you fly.

The interface of the app is very understandable, ensuring that you can easily find the information you're looking for. On the app's homepage, you'll find a search bar in which you can enter your flight number to get its details. You can search for other information through the search bar as well, like the details about the airport. For instance, if you've entered the flight number, then FlightAware will display all the information about that flight. This includes details about that plane's upcoming flights as well as some of its past flights.

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If you want to check details about the plane's upcoming journey, simply tap that schedule date card. In the following window, you will see all the details of the journey, which include the plane's departure and arrival time. It also shows the terminal number of both your departure and arrival airports. There are two additional buttons as well — More details and Where is my plane. Tapping the More Details button displays extra information like airplane average speed, flight duration, distance, average flight delay on the selected route, and more. If you realize that your flight is delayed, you can tap the Track inbound plane button to check out the other flights that are arriving at your airport. The Where is my plane button, on the other hand, displays the current location of your plane.

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That's all the basics of using the FlightAware app. There are many advanced options as well, like sharing the flight details, changing FlightAware search bar search functionality, and more. You'll get used to these additional options once you start using the app more.

One of the main concerns of using a flight tracking application like FlightAware is how accurate and live they are. Because you would not want to rely on a platform that displays outdated information. Fortunately, that isn't the case with FlightAware.

The data you see on the FlightAware app or its website is only around 30 seconds delayed from real-time. Furthermore, the FlightAware app also has an animated map at the bottom of the screen that displays all the planes flying in your area. You can simply tap on any plane to find its details, like its plane number and route. The position of the aircraft on the map is delayed by around one to two minutes from real time.

Aman Kumar

FlightAware updates all the other data related to flights every one to four times per minute. As per their FAQ page, this data will be more frequently updated if you are logged in to their platform.