Data & accuracy

Where the data comes from

A flight status app is only worth having if you know how much to trust it. This page explains exactly which services Flight Tracker reads, how fresh that information is, where it is weakest, and the things the app does not do. Nothing on this page is marketing — if we cannot promise something, we say so.

Flight data: Aviation Edge

Every flight status, schedule, gate, terminal and baggage figure in the app comes from Aviation Edge, a third-party flight data API. The app sends a query — a flight number and date, a route, or an airport — and displays what the API returns for it. Appers Systems does not collect, generate or edit flight data of its own.

Aviation Edge in turn aggregates schedule and status information from airlines, airports and aviation data partners. That chain matters: each link adds a little delay, and a field is only as good as whoever published it. If an airline has not filed a gate yet, nobody downstream has it either.

How current it is

The app fetches fresh data each time you open or refresh a flight, and it caches recent responses briefly so that reopening a screen is quick and cheap on mobile data. In normal operation an update usually reaches you within minutes of the source publishing it.

Why a status can lag the gate board

• The airport display is the source, not a copy. Screens in the terminal are driven directly by the airport's own operational systems. Our copy has travelled through an airline feed, an aggregator and an API before it reaches your phone.
• Gates change last-minute. A gate reassignment thirty minutes before boarding is common and is often announced in the terminal before it appears in any feed.
• Disruption makes everything worse. During weather events, strikes or a major diversion, the volume of changes rises and feeds fall behind. This is exactly when people check an app most, and exactly when it is least reliable.
• Some fields are simply never filled in. Baggage carousels, arrival terminals and aircraft types are optional in most feeds. A blank field means "not reported", not "does not exist".
• Coverage is strongest for scheduled commercial flights. Charter, cargo, private and some domestic-only regional services may be missing or thin.

What this is not

This is the part most apps in this category leave out, so we will be blunt about it.

Some flight apps run their own networks of ground receivers that pick up signals broadcast by aircraft, and plot those aircraft on a map from the signals they collect. Flight Tracker does not do that. We do not operate ground receiver networks, we do not own tracking stations, and we do not display aircraft positions derived from that kind of hardware.

The practical consequences are worth stating plainly. Our map shows the positions our data provider reports for the flights in its data, refreshed as new reports arrive — so it will not show every aircraft that is airborne, and it can differ from apps built on a receiver network. We have no cockpit view, no augmented-reality plane spotting, no aircraft registration lookup and no historical playback. If your interest is watching air traffic as a hobby, an app built on that kind of network will serve you better, and we would rather say so than pretend.

What we do well is the narrower job: answer "is this flight on time, and which gate, terminal and belt does it use" quickly, in 15 languages, without a paywall on the lookup itself.

Weather: Open-Meteo

Airport weather — temperature, wind, humidity, visibility and pressure, plus a short forecast — comes from Open-Meteo, an open weather service. It is a general consumer weather source resolved to the airport's coordinates.

It is not an official aviation weather product, it is not an aerodrome observation or forecast bulletin, and it must never be used for flight planning or any operational decision. It is there to answer "do I need a coat when I land", nothing more. Pilots and dispatchers should use the official aviation weather services published for that purpose.

Coverage: 4,000+ airports

The app carries searchable detail for 4,000+ airports worldwide — codes, timezone, elevation, coordinates and a contact number where one is published. That is the real figure from the dataset we ship, and it is deliberately not rounded up. An earlier version of this website quoted a larger number; it was wrong, and correcting it is more useful to you than a bigger headline.

Airport coverage and flight coverage are also different things. A large airport being in the dataset does not mean every service touching it is in the flight feed.

When to call the airline instead

Read further

• How accurate is flight tracking data? — what the numbers mean, and where the error creeps in.
• How flight tracking apps actually work — the difference between a status feed and a position feed, in plain language.
• How Flight Tracker works — every screen, field by field.
• Support and FAQ — why a flight might not be found, and how to reach us.