Flight Tracker Review: Tracking My Own Air Canada Flight from 40,000 Feet

Simple Flying's proprietary flight tracker, launched in beta in May 2026, has drawn attention with a first-person operational review conducted during a revenue Air Canada flight between Frankfurt (FRA) and Montreal (YUL) aboard a Boeing 787-8. The tool distinguishes itself from established platforms such as FlightAware and Flightradar24 by targeting aviation enthusiasts with layered data displays that include visual NOTAMs overlaid directly on the map, military aircraft positions, erratic-movement alerts, and granular altitude and stage-of-flight indicators. The reviewer used the tracker throughout cruise at approximately 40,000 feet, finding it more useful than the aircraft's native in-flight entertainment map, which required periodic manual reactivation and lacked sufficient resolution for precise geographic identification. The tracker was used to identify the author's childhood hometown during the western European overfly, and later to monitor Montreal arrival traffic and predict the active landing runway during the final descent along the St. Lawrence River.

For professional and corporate pilots, the most operationally notable feature is the visual NOTAM overlay. NOTAMs remain one of the most persistently criticized elements of preflight planning due to their text-heavy, inconsistently formatted presentation in traditional systems. A consumer-grade platform rendering NOTAMs graphically on a live traffic map represents the kind of spatial contextualization that tools like SkyVector, Garmin Pilot, and ForeFlight have pursued for years in the certified and professional segment. Whether Simple Flying's implementation meets the accuracy and currency standards required for actual flight planning is unstated in the article, and pilots should treat it as a situational awareness supplement rather than an authoritative preflight source. The erratic-movement alert function is also worth noting, as it suggests an attempt to flag anomalous flight behavior in near-real-time — a feature with obvious relevance to anyone monitoring traffic in congested terminal environments or tracking company aircraft.

The arrival-filtering capability described in the review reflects a use case that has practical resonance for corporate flight departments and charter operators who routinely monitor inbound traffic at busy hub airports to anticipate sequencing, delay exposure, and runway configuration. By filtering the map to display only Montreal arrivals, the reviewer was able to infer runway assignment before ATC issued the actual clearance — a form of predictive situational awareness that dispatchers and flight followers already attempt using tools like FlightAware's airport activity displays. For single-pilot operations or small flight departments without dedicated dispatch support, a mobile-accessible tool capable of showing arrival flow at a destination in real time could reduce workload during the descent planning phase, particularly at airports where runway configuration changes materially affect fuel burn, noise abatement routing, or ground logistics.

The broader context here is an accelerating proliferation of consumer and prosumer flight tracking platforms, each attempting to differentiate through data density and UI design. Simple Flying's tracker enters a market that includes Flightradar24's premium tiers, FlightAware's operator-facing Firehose and Foresight products, and a growing number of API-driven tools used by FBOs, schedulers, and Part 135 operators for real-time fleet visibility. The platform's beta status and weekly feature iteration based on reader feedback suggests a community-development model rather than a certified avionics pathway, which positions it clearly in the enthusiast and informal operational awareness segment. For working pilots, the tracker warrants monitoring as a supplementary tool — particularly if the NOTAM visualization and traffic alert features continue to develop — but should not be confused with the regulatory-grade data products on which actual flight operations depend.