FlightAware Expands With Ground Tracking Capability

At the 2021 NBAA-BACE convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, FlightAware announced new tiers of aircraft tracking, including FlightAware Global Silver. This is a lower-cost addition to the popular Global flight tracking suite platform that the company said is used by over 15,000 business jets for tracking.

The new Global Silver tier allows for aircraft tracking on the ground with the Ready To Taxi feature. This uses surface status alerts so you'll know when the aircraft powers on, begins to taxi and parks at its final destination. You can watch the aircraft line up to taxi with a new surface map that's available on the flight tracking page.

The Silver tier offers a variety of other features, including taxi-out time updates, which calculate updated takeoff, landing and taxi-in times. The data is available to authorized users—including FBOs in hopes of seamless ground service. FBOs can also be automatically notified of the aircraft's arrival (and enables the FBO to track the inbound flight segment) even when the flight is blocked for public tracking, as many corporate operations are.

FlightAware has grown considerably and has expanded well beyond the basic feature of airborne tracking. The company has added premium weather and mapping data for accessing current and forecast weather, including turbulence, jet stream, icing, lightning and other products. FlightAware receives flight plan data from over 45 countries, and flight positional data is derived from a sizable terrestrial ADS-B network. The company offers a variety of subscription options, available on www.flightaware.com.