Planes Live - Flight Tracker Reviews

by Purdueman

I originally bought PlanesLive because I live on the landing pattern for Detroit Metro (DTW). The first year I had PlanesLive , it was great! I could sit on my deck and watch (and track) flights coming in and out of DTW. Within the last 3-4 months however PlanesLive has gone downhill quickly. Planes will fly over the house and not show up on the tracker, wrong flight numbers, incorrect maps, etc. I have sent numerous emails to customer service regarding my issues and basically I was brushed off. I really can’t justify paying $4.99 a month for an app that doesn’t work properly.
UPDATE: Just received an email wanting me to reach out to the support team for help. Are you serious?!?!? The “support team” has been well aware of these issues for at least 3 months now since I have emailed them on 3 separate occasions. And only now they want to take me seriously (or try to save face) after I left a bad review of their crappy app. Sorry, too late. You have had ample time to correct the issue and basically ignored me. I’ve canceled my subscription and removed PlanesLive from my devices. Absolutely horrendous customer service.

by Papispunk

I paid for PlanesLive 10$ some years ago. Worked good but got sloppy over the last year or so. Now I know why. My purchase is not working anymore. Os14? I checked and found the new App. But now it is way overpriced. Who is using PlanesLive?-people that like to identify what is just happening above them. A fun thing. Nobody would pay for that reason more than the one time 10$. For exact flight information for travel planning, you have tons of free and better apps.
Then all so called free trials should never go automatically to a subscription. That’s in my opinion fraudulent. You accept a free thing. Never do you approve of to a payment plan. To call it a „free“ trial is misleading and should be illegal.
Sad, I liked PlanesLive. To change it during a pandemic where people don’t have the usual financial abilities is also not to smart.
Greed is never ending positive.

by FenFamWill

I cannot properly evaluate this apps functionality in free mode, because every 3rd touch of the screen pops up very annoying loud game ads. More than one; at least two every time. Yes, I know I can select free trial of full features to get rid of them. But I do not want to go through that hassle, including not forgetting to unsubscribe in 3 days if I don't want it.

The developer's high pressure business model is flawed and reflects a lack of understanding of his customer. He would get more subscriptions if he allowed the person to evaluate PlanesLive in peace without signing up for the free trial. Then after a few days, begin the harassment, if you must. But as it is, it is too disturbing to take the time to evaluate. I write this knowing he is reading these.

Too bad. It looked like it might have been a good about to have. But it is not worth the hassle.

by Oakwater Baby

Waste of time. Ugh better to use PlanesLive The Flight Tracker from International. Trying to find a particular flight? forget it. All you will get are those incessant moronic game ads from King - every single time. After hours of trying I've given up on PlanesLive and am going to delete it for good and all. I follow a lot of family flights and PlanesLive does nothing but get me terribly frustrated. By comparison Internationals app The Flight Tracker is easy to use, tells me what I want to know and generally keeps me updated on the status of my family's flights. What more could I want?
Follow up report: Tried to track my wife's flight - could not find the flight track anywhere, so it must be still on the ground. But guess what, it took off an more than hour ago and is already more than 500 miles en-route to its destination. PlanesLive is still crap!

by Mamaof2cuties

I wanted to see what this was app was like. It showed free. Then going into after install it showed I could have a three day trial. Ok. No problem. Then after clicking ok it brought me to a screen the price options for 3 levels of subscription. I clicked x because it didn’t pertain to me. However it then showed on the next screen that I had the premium (highest) level purchased to be charged after the three days of trial. I freaked and got in the Apple chat and was walking through subscription cancellation. I then deleted PlanesLive . I will confirm in three days to make sure I am not going to get call. I for sure clicked x. It was a big x but obviously a ruse as clicking it signed you up for the highest amount. Not right. I don’t know why people do business this way. I have no desire to trust them with my money in any way. So beware.

by Honore Du Gaulois

Faultless, simple, accurate would be my description for PlanesLive not too many months ago. Today PlanesLive was inoperable. I needed to track a flight ATL-ORD-CPH. The attempt to input devoured 10 minutes. PlanesLive could not find the flight or anything else. Delight became disappointment. These folks can do a great deal better than what I got today. I hate putting this into the public. But how do you contact an app maker directly? I went to the airline site through Google and had my answer when I touched enter. Then I was asked to pay $6.88 to rid myself of ads. Not their greatest moment in sales. Get back to your former faultlessness, simplicity and accuracy folks. It hurts to experience the failure of a great product.

by Ddont Ttry

I love plane trackers. I was fooled by an advertisement for PlanesLive that Depicted the view of the plane as the most realistic I’ve seen. It showed zooming in on planes and it looked almost as good as a version of flight simulator showing the planes in real time.

I downloaded PlanesLive and signed up for the trial. It’s said after 3 day trial I would be charged, And that if I wanted to cancel I could just do so in the settings area.

I found the plane tracker once I had access to be no better than any other free version that I already have. There is no place within the settings menu to discontinue the trail before being charged. I’ll probably have to block the charge via my credit card company. What a hassle and what a scam.

by Nelsonfan101

Literally downloaded PlanesLive to track ONE flight. When I opened it for the first time, I could click the 3 free day trial option or the $9.99 per year subscription option. I clicked “free trial” and was charged $10. I can’t figure out how to undo it without sending someone an email, which I will definitely be doing, since PlanesLive is also terrible. Not intuitive at all. Tried to search by flight number, then by name of airport (midway), but had to just type “Chicago” to bring up the airports. Then when I went to the arrivals page for the proper airport, the specific flight I’m looking for didn’t even show up. I’m so annoyed.

by BrianGuyGo!

When I first got PlanesLive, I was amazed by its capabilities. It was completely free, and you had everything. Now, you get this dulled out app that’s just flight numbers and where they see flying. It doesn’t even tell you the type of plane! Now I could buy the paid version if PlanesLive for $6.99, but I’d still have to pay for the subscription to get all the features PlanesLive used to have. Please, I beg you, at least bring back some of the features that used to be in PlanesLive. I’m fine if there’s a premium version, but taking away features from people who already had them? That’s just wrong on so many levels.

by Sealley

This free app should encourage me to buy the full version. It does not. But the constant answer always posted on negative reviews by the developer is functionality limitations are compensated by PlanesLive being free. In other words - you can take it , or leave it. That is not a very inviting response to buy the full version. I would like to see how PlanesLive might work if I bought it. I guess this free app is a preview of how I might also dislike the full version, so why buy it ? The constant pop ups that put me into questionable websites really don’t reflect well on the developers. I suppose the full version is loaded with many things I don’t want on my phone.

by 3gbuohbihbkckjbk

I just did not have a good experience with PlanesLive trying to track my hubbys flights. I typed in his flights as in date, time, airline, flight number. It would alert me every time that regularly scheduled flight took off and landed. But his flight would not show up, or if it was there the track feature...which worked on the other flights....did not work. I spent three frustrating days trying to figure PlanesLive out and never got it to work correctly.. PlanesLive doesn't work. Sorry developer...

by Keelmiester

Well I really hate it when app developers screw over their long time users. I have as fine with the free version only showing 3 departure and landing times for airports with scheduled service. And I was ok with the fact that it didn’t typically show GA. But now that there is no option to use the free versions and you have to pay, bye bye app. You have been deleted. I would have been ok with an ad at the beginning when opening but now this. And if there was a one time fee of like $10, I would buy it. But this crap of monthly subscription, I’ll just stick with seeing traffic on ForeFlight. I hate to see developers screw over existing users. Maybe even give us a discount for a year, just something.

**edit after update**
It seems the x button is now back to enter the free mode.

by Bari T.

Have had PlanesLive and enjoyed it for quite some time. I liked showing people how you can choose any plane and get so much detail on it. It was mind boggling for anyone who saw how many planes are in the air at any time and how you can track each one in real time.

Then I today I launched it so I could identify a plane flying overhead and discovered it was now a subscription only app!

Yes, PlanesLive does an amazing feat though it really collects available info from control towers. But to charge a subscription for it? I think that only the die hard aviation geeks would fork over $5 a week.

I subscribe to a suite of apps that are second to none because they offer apps that provide world class tools for editing photos, videos, music, text, web design and a whole lot more. Adobe offers subscription for individual apps or a whole collection of them. They charge for sophisticated and professional tools.

You’re not Adobe!

When you start producing apps that pilot use as well as a host of apps for other aviation uses, then you will have a right to charge a subscription based on value.

Until then, I’m out.

by JI///M

I live directly in the flight path of Philly International. Planes are almost always flying directly over my house. When sitting out back in the summer, we always wondered where the planes were going or coming from. I saw PlanesLive and had to have it. I like it a lot, but it’s often wrong. Sometimes planes fly directly over head, and when I pull up PlanesLive , there is no plane near my house. This happens a lot. Why doesn’t PlanesLive show planes flying over my neighborhood? Can this be fixed?

by John Hadwin

I drive for Lyft and decided to base my decisions on whether to go and wait at the airport on the Arrivals section for PlanesLive. It would say that three flights were coming into TUS by the end of the hour, on time, but no flights would come. However using the map, I was able to click on all the planes in the state, and could see that none were on there way to Tucson, except a cargo plane, and the ability to do that was awesome! That gave me the info I needed to leave and stop wasting my time waiting on something that wasn’t coming.

by Heathwise

Amazing simply Amazing…you know when you’re a little kid and you hear a jet flyover, you look up, and wonder, where are you bound for… Well all those childhood dreams can now be reality, with Planes LIVE, you can now look up into the sky, and know exactly When, Where, and What, plane is flying above you, all your childhood dreams finally come true…..

by Durbeck Von Wyman

For a free app it does the job. Would I spend $ to track planes? Probably not, but when I want to i.d. what kind of aircraft is flying over head it just the thing. When I need to find out when my wife’s flight is getting in to Logan and I can actually see it over Providence it’s a good thing. When I can see cargo flights represented as Santa’s sleigh in Alaska to show the kids on Christmas Eve... now that’s cool!

by MAHALO05Sandman

Fun to keep track of family traveling all over, plus, I enjoy sitting in our backyard and identifying various flights going over our city. Sometimes when I one of our granddaughter is with us, we will go out, look up imagine the number of passengers on a flight and crest a mystery about why they are in route to a particular destination. It is amazing what a whopper a 12 year old can make up.

by 23Scollins

PlanesLive is so amazing and accurate. I absolutely love planes and being able to hear a plane above you and check you phone and see the exact flight is so amazing to me. You get to see every detail about the plane. It is so worth the money if you love aviation. Amazing App. Only think I could suggest changing is showing different size planes on the maps for commercial and private planes! But besides that it is so amazing and I love it.

by SonomaHM

The “free” version is fully functional but very annoying ads make it quite obnoxious to use.
I’m very frugal and hate to pay, but Planes Live is worth the measly $7 annual fee.
All commercial aircraft use ADS-B and are available to track. General Aviation (private planes) must use it if they wish to participate with air traffic control.
We use PlanesLive every time one of us is in the air.

by TallFishermanKen

I’ve always enjoyed watching planes and flying them myself whether it be day or night. I always wonder where they’re going, what plane I am seeing, its altitude, speed, destination, etc. With PlanesLive, you can view all those things. You can track the plane to see its flight path to see if you will see it fly passed you or not. On the other hand, I live VERY close to railroad tracks and freight trains pass every 10 minutes or so. I wonder the same details about them and I’d love to have an app the same as Planes Live but for trains.

by Tina747

I think PlanesLive is awesome. I didn’t realize how curious I am to know where planes are, all the time. We live in the landing path of a small commercial airport and PlanesLive tracks these planes with incredible accuracy. So cool to know where these planes are coming from, as well as the altitude and speed. I purchased the premium app and I love the weather radar as well. I’ve totally geeked out!