Direct flight to Barcelona
Perhaps you did not know that there are mobile applications and websites that allow you to follow, live and in real time, the flight of any plane . Well, you know: we are going to show you the most interesting ones, and how they work or what options they offer. With them you will never lose sight of a plane ...
What is it for? If you like airplanes, you will enjoy seeing the routes they do or even imagining that you are riding in one and seeing the landscape you would be passing through, the areas that you fly over . And even if you don't like airplanes, as I do in case it doesn't show, this can be very useful when you have to pick someone up at the airport, because you will know first-hand where their plane is going and how long it takes : no more long waits (and expensive parking tickets).
The best web and Apps
My favorite is FlightRadar24 that allows free access to most of its functions, with the only limitation that every 30 minutes it will make you re-log in. It serves as a perfect example to see the (large) amount of information that we can have about the plane being tracked: just enter, by default it will detect our location and show us a map of our country and then dozens , perhaps hundreds, of small planes will appear in movement : each one is a real flight.
If we click on any one, it will show us in the left column a photo (generally the photo of the aircraft that we have selected, not only of that model but exactly that unit), and the information of its flight : flight number, origin and destination, Theoretical and actual departure time, theoretical and expected arrival time, and type of aircraft. But there is more: we have altitude and speed in real time , and also a graph of those two data since takeoff.
If we click on the 3D option, things get more interesting: where before we saw the map in zenith view "a la Google Earth ", now the view changes to a detailed 3D in which we can choose to see the plane from outside, or whatever we would watch from the cockpit. I've used it in areas where I know that aerial perspective well and it 's really like flying there .
While I was writing this article, I saw a flight coming from Dubai on approach to Barajas and I waited to capture the screen when it was already in the final stage, that is, about to land : the landing strip is seen at the top of the screen. If you are an observer, you will have seen that the height is 770 meters ... yes, above sea level, that is to say, just 150 meters above the track that we remember is at about 600 m altitude (it was coming!).
More options
Two similar to FlightRadar24 are F lightAware and Aeroseek , also with somewhat limited free access but advanced payment options. The first is very good to know more about the plane we are following: in the same way as before, we enter and on the map full of flights we click the one we want to follow (or we use the flight search engine if we know which one we want information about). Not only will it appear with your data, route, theoretical and planned hours, but we will also access the database of your flights : we will know which are your next two or three flights, and which were your previous ten or twelve.
In Aeroseek the information is more focused on the routes , and we can choose several modes of presentation: the " vector " one is practical if you are a controller (even if you are an amateur) or ... if you were Superman and you were flying in the surroundings, to know where don't pass if you don't want to have to do a movie rescue later. It has a cockpit view option that allows us to experience the flight in real time and over the areas through which it passes.
Do you like airplanes but are you also about boats? Well, we also have something for you: Localizatodo can help us to locate a plane, follow it, even reproduce part of its flight , or the same for any ship that is navigating in the same way: either we look for it, or we click on the map and discover who he is , where he comes from, or where he is going.
