Moms Will Love Not Having To Remind Us To Call After Safe Arrival

FlightAware, global providers of flight information and actionable aviation intelligence, have announced the launch of Aviator, their newest suite of flight tracking tools designed for piston aircraft pilots and operators.

As a GA pilot or operator, if you've ever used FlightAware's website you have likely wondered why the company has not offered us mere mortals with bottom-challenged wallets services similar to those offered to countless turbine aircraft operators, FBO's and airline dispatch offices, to name just a few. If your aircraft has GPS and ADS-B, the wait is over.

Aviator is a reasonably-priced subscription-based software service (what the IT world calls Software-as-a-Service or SaaS) accesible through a browser or an app that runs on Apple's iOS. Support for Android is on the roadmap but no release date has been announced as of yet.

Within your subscription you can register up to ten aircraft, including rentals, and depending on your subscription tier you then have access to features such as Ready To Taxi, Premium Weather and Map Layers, Surface Visualizations and more.

One of the more interesting feature is the status notification capability that can send messages via email or text messages based on ADS-B activity and other sources of information to designated "stakeholders" you choose to include in your account. The process begins with the addition of a "flight intent" into the software, which triggers an event-based notification chain that can include power-on, taxi, takeoff, enroute events such as diversions, landing and shutdown at an FBO, all from your stream of ADS-B messages.

And here is where Mom will be well taken care of. If you have the kind of mother who is always reminding you to let her know when you have safely arrived, this is the ticket. As an unintended side effect, if your Mom is included in the list, some people may be less inclined to do engage in behavior others would described as mentally-challenged. Think about it -- people behave differently when they know others are watching, especially if your Mom is in the crowd. This makes Aviator a safety tool as well.

There are two tiers of subscription, Aviator and Aviator+, with the primary differences being access to Premium Weather and automated flight history reports. Pricing is available by following the FMI link below, and there is a 30% discount until the end of Airventure 2021 on August 2nd.

FMI: https://flightaware.com/commercial/aviator/