Wingtrace: Plane Tracker

Wingtrace shows you the aircraft Point your phone at the sky and Wingtrace draws the aircraft onto the camera image with callsign, altitude and distance — and a photo of that exact aircraft. Only the ones you can actually see: the app accounts for the curvature of the Earth and for how large the aircraft appears from where you are standing, so an airliner 46 km away is included while a dot at 100 km is not. The whole map lives inside the app — coastlines, lakes, borders, 34,000 towns and 14,844 runways. There are no map tiles to download, so the map is there the moment you open it, and the only thing that costs data is the aircraft positions themselves. You will notice it on roaming. Turn on "Detailed map" if you want roads and more place names while you are online. Tap an aircraft for the strip: callsign, type, altitude and speed. Pull it all the way up for the full picture — a photo of the aircraft, the route drawn as a great circle with how far there is left to go, and the raw numbers from the transponder: the altitude selected on the autopilot, indicated and true airspeed, mach, and the wind and temperature at the aircraft's altitude. Other apps charge a subscription for that data. Tap an airport to see what it looks like, how long the runways are, what they are surfaced with, and which radio frequencies are in use. More than 2,000 airports have a photo. Put a star on an aircraft and be told when it takes off or lands even while the app is in the background. See the closest aircraft with distance and bearing. Your location stays on the phone and is not sent to anyone. WHERE DOES THE DATA COME FROM? Aircraft broadcast their own position over ADS-B. The signals are picked up by a network of volunteers with antennas on their roofs and made available by adsb.lol under the Open Database License. Airport data comes from OurAirports (public domain), route data from VRS standing data, departure and arrival times for Norwegian airports from Avinor, aircraft photos from Planespotters and airport photos from Wikimedia Commons. PLEASE NOTE Aircraft positions are fetched over the network. Without a connection the map is still there, but there are no aircraft on it. Coverage is uneven. Aircraft below a couple of thousand feet and aircraft without ADS-B are missing. Military aircraft appear only when they broadcast, and as a rule they do not. Positions may be delayed, incomplete or wrong. Wingtrace is not affiliated with any airline, airport or authority, and must not be used for navigation, flight planning or any other operational purpose.