flight tracker

[mickm]

We have flown Southwest many times. We recently flew from San Jose to Orlando and then to Hartford. I have never grown up (I'm 67) and still love to sit by the window and watch the country go by. I have always wanted to know what I'm looking at and was thrilled to hear there was a free flight tracker app.

I soon was disappointed. You could not zoom in to a meaningful level. Worse, the flight path shown was not where we were! As we crossed Long Island Sound the path showed us coming in over Bridgeport. I had hoped to see New Haven and was pleasantly surprised to see it out our window. We were on the left side of the plane.

Maybe it would cost too much to allow zooming in too closely or maybe it's some kind of security feature, but what is the point of giving passengers an app so they can see where they are if it's not true?

[TheMiddleSeat]

I totally get your frustration, I too enjoy tracking my own flights and often look up flights I see overhead on the Flightradar24 app to see where they are going. The tracking on most airlines is not very detailed so one idea I've used a few times while on a flight is to connect to the WiFi for data and if you have your phone near the window you can get a GPS signal which allows you to use the Flightradar24 app while on the flight. Hopefully people don't mind me reaching across from the middle seat to get a signal. That app gives you a much more detailed tracking method and you can figure out exactly where you are and what you see out of the window.

--TheMiddleSeat

[chgoflyer]

Sadly, the Flight Tracker is kinda useless now (except for the "time to destination" perhaps). A couple of years ago it was much better -- giving you detailed info about where you were. The plane icon is laughably large now, and even when you zoom in you can't enlarge enough for it to be helpful. I'm not sure why the change was made... I really miss the old version.