Learn How to Fly Like a Pro this holiday season and everyday

Tech Talks

We examine FlightAware, Expert Flyer, LIVEATC, and FlightBoard 3. With up-to-the-minute information from these apps, you can make smarter travel decisions, reduce stress, and save time and money.

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Transcript Are you dreading holiday travel?
We have apps that will help you fly like a pro!

The first app and website you and your loved ones should know, cuz it allows them to track you while you're in flight, is called Flight Aware. I suggest you put the app on your phone. Here's a look at the website. We can track what flights are going from RDU to Palm Beach. Where this is going to be helpful is to know, if you get delayed, what other flights are available. If you're in process of flying, you can see whether the flights are all scheduled and whether they have arrived. When the flight is actually in flight you will be able to track it. Your loved ones will be able to track the flight while it's in process and get real-time updates to show whether the flight is looking like it's going to be on time or delayed. Let's say you're flying from RDU to Palm Beach but you know that the flight is going from JFK to RDU. You're going to want to watch the plane on its flight from JFK to RDU to see if that plane, the equipment, is going to arrive to RDU on time. This is one of the good tools to manage that and keep an eye on what the status of those flights are.

This next one is a super secret geek tool. I question whether I should be putting this out on the Internet. It's called Expert Flyer. This one has been around forever but few people know about it. It is a subscription. It'll cost you a few bucks per month. They've been around, they've been talked about in media, but look at their marketing material and how old this is. It is showing a Blackberry. But that's because they've been in the airline business forever. What this does is it gives you inside information that only the airline personnel know. So you'll want to do your free subscription here. I find that the majority of what you need is going to be in their basic package. Now if you're a business traveler, you may want to be able to look at things with the premium option for nine bucks a month or five bucks a month if you're flying across the pond or flying out to California. It's worth having additional information especially with all the holiday headaches that are coming.

My next application is called Live ATC. There's a couple versions of ATC, but I like the live ATC version. It is $3 but it's a great network and I support them with my big $3 subscription. I have never been on it and not had it pull up the frequencies and inputs that I'm looking to listen to. What you're going to do with this is put it on to the area you're going to. So in the example, in the background you're hearing play is Miami Center, so I'm listening the homestead side of the Miami Center. If I'm flying into the Miami area or know somebody coming out of the Miami area I want to see if there's any problems or any major diversions. The center is a feeder area for that whole region. That's going to give you a good overview of whether there's problems and congestion on the day that you're flying.

The next geek tool to have on your iPhone or Android is going to be Flight Board. It looks like the old school flight boards from the airports or what you might see at a train station. The reason you're going to want this is it is going to let you know what other flights are going on at your airport. So if you're starting to see a lot of delays, there's a possibility your flight's going to be delayed and you need to start looking at alternatives. The Android version may not be by the same developer as the iOS version. They seem to have the same functionality, but the Android version had a lot more popups as well as advertisements. I do like the aesthetic look of the version on the iPad. It is something I could see me running on iPad and just having in the background if I know people are flying out a particular Airport.

Learn How to Fly Like a Pro this holiday season and everyday

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