FlightView for mobile devices tracks and maps your flights

by Scott Carmichael on

Regular (and not-so-regular) travelers can stay one step ahead of the airline by keeping a close eye on their flight status. In most cases, airlines will wait as long as they can to alert you to any changes in your flight, which is where FlightView can help.

This app is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, Palm Pre, Blackberry and Android devices. FlightView uses realtime FAA flight data to keep you informed about any changes, delays or cancellations. Once you enter your airline and flight number, FlightView displays the current status of your flight, along with a map showing its location. If you have more than one trip, you can add them to “My Trips.”

Once added, you can even share your flights through email, text message, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Another handy feature inside FlightView is its real time airport delay map, once again harnessing data from the FAA. When following the status of a flight, you can even view weather reports for the departure and arrival airports.

Now for the best part – FlightView is free for Android devices, $1.99 for the iPhone and $4.99 for other devices, making it one of the cheapest flight status apps available. In a perfect world, the app would support syncing with TripIt, but other than that, this is a well designed and easy to use application, and one that is in a category of “must haves” for any traveler with a mobile device. When push comes to shove, you really are on your own when you travel.

You’ll find FlightView in the Apple App store, the Palm Pre app catalog, Blackberry Appworld and the Android Marketplace. Android users can scan the bar code on the right to access the app.

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View air traffic like nothing you’ve ever seen before

by Scott Carmichael on

This photo is not a closeup of your DNA, nor is it the latest work of art at the local gallery. It is in fact, a representation of every single flight in the domestic US airspace over a 24 hour period.

The picture is part of a map built by Aaron Koblin, on display at Wired.com. The portion you see above is of air traffic into Chicago’s 2 airports, and if you look closely, you’ll clearly see planes headed for O’Hare, and those going to Midway.

The map is zoomable and scrollable, and can be sorted by make, model and altitude of the plane. The real time flight data was provided by FlightView. I can highly recommend wasting a couple of minutes of your busy day to play around with the map!