Todays ‘featured’ application is based on one of my primary mobile operating systems (iOS), and aimed towards either hobby plane spotters, anxious spouses or just general plane enthusiasts.
This application developed by Pinkfroot Limited, and is essentially a real-time air traffic radar!
Plane Finder using an overlay to Google Maps technologies to display live flight information based on parameters you set.
Initially Plane Finder will find you current position using your devices built-in location hardware. Then upon loading will display a radar type display of all known charted airlines right above and around your location!
But wait… The features don’t stop there.. In fact far from it! Using the standard pinch gesture you can zoom inout and pan around the Google maps view, zooming out to track planes across the entire world all at the same time..
However, the sky’s a busy place, and finding that one particular plane that’s circling your current location could prove difficult. Which is where plane finders find and filter options come in.
The search window enables you to narrow down the sky’s traffic using the plane’s flight number or aircraft registration number, whilst giving you a brief overview of the planes originating and destination airports along with the planes model number.
If you would like to narrow your search/view down either further you can use the built-in filter options to specify details about the operator or plane you are looking for.
Once you have located a plane you would like more information about, tapping on it loads its details page:
This page also gives you the opportunity to set up ‘push’ alerts, for when the plane you have selected reaches a certain location or becomes visible/takes off. You can also view details of all the planes previous flights. Including originating and destination airports, actual flight path, approximate miles flown and flight number.
The details used by the application are obtained using ADS-B plane feeds, which all commercial planes use to transmit information to traffic control.
Plane Finder’s features include:
- Live moving planes
- Social Network Integration
- Flight path contrails
- Search by flight number or aircraft registration number
- Bookmark locations
- Aircraft illustrations
- Aircraft photographs
- Filter by airline and/or altitude
- Detailed flight information
- Technical flight information
The application is available in two flavours, there’s a limited free version and then a paid unlimited full version. Both available from the iTunes AppStore!
