Planes Live iOS App REVIEW

Planes Live is an application that allows you to track flights in real time.

Now, I’d say that I fly more than the average person. I’ve been on more than twenty airplanes in 2016 so far. So when I say that, though I think Planes Live is interesting and kind of cool, I don’t know how it would be particularly useful to the casual traveler, know that it’s coming from someone who was really hoping to find it useful.

Upon opening the application, you are treated to a map of the world, over which are little blue icons of ALL THE PLANES IN THE SKY. There are so many, guys. So many. You can tap on each plane to see where it’s going, where it took off, its altitude, speed, model, and basically everything you’d want to know about a random plane in the sky. I found myself really distracted by this, and ended up discovering airports on little islands in the South Pacific that I didn’t know existed. So that’s the kind of cool part of the app.

Besides randomly exploring the little blue planes, you can search for specific things, which is infinitely more useful, though less fun, of course. You can save commonly visited airports under My Places, search flights near your location, and search for specific flights using search filters like model, speed, departure/arrival airports, etc. You can also search other keywords using the search bar at the top of the home screen.

My problem with this application is that besides the cool, kind of useless to the average person features, it doesn’t do anything more than can easily be done elsewhere. Again, I meander a lot. I subscribe to notifications for every flight I take, so that I am aware of any delays or useful information. I also keep the specific airline’s flight tracker open throughout travel day. I find that this available information (including gate number, etc.) more comprehensively useful than that available on Planes Live. I also don’t particularly like that the only available flights to track are the ones currently active. I happen to be flying later this week, and I can’t search for my future flight in order to get notifications for it.

Overall, I think Planes Live is interesting, but I won’t be using it.

DOWNLOAD – Planes Live – iOS – $3.99

There is also a FREE version of Planes Live. DOWNLOAD from iTunes.

For more information, visit apalon.com/planes_live.
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