The Best Way to Keep Track of the Flights, According to FlyerTalk

When it comes to flights once traveled, few passengers are as dedicated historians as FlyerTalkers, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t on the lookout for the latest technology to help us more easily catalog every aspect our travels. Of course, the world’s largest community of expert travelers have some opinions about the best way to track where we have been – and how we got there.

A FlyerTalk member by the rather intimidating handle of “theultimateflyer” posed the question, “What service do you use to keep a log of all the flights you’ve taken?” Although this ultimate traveler personally prefers the site FlightDiary to archive air travels past, present and future, fellow FlyerTalkers offered a range of high-tech options to make tracking even the penultimate traveler’s history a snap.

BA 97

The website ba97.com not only allows users to record and share flight activity, but also alerts members when itineraries overlap with other users to allow those users to plan an airport or on the plane meetup. A number of the searchable travel histories available show historic Concorde flights making BA 97 the OG of travel log sites. The app even allows users to record cabin and seat assignments for posterity. FlyerTalk member etch5895 notes, however, that the site has at least one notable drawback, “You don’t get a nifty map.”

Flight Memory

Flight Memory, or Flug Statistik as it’s more commonly known, not only allows frequent flyers to keep track of every flight they have ever taken, but also compiles handy statistics allowing flyers easy access to the total number of hours spent in the air, longest and shortest flights taken and even the percentage of the planet circumnavigated. Users have the ability to view a map to help travelers to visualize their travels. The site also aggregates the input from all users to compile a snapshot of any given day in air travel.

Flight Radar 24

The Swedish website flightradar24 provides real-time air traffic information and also lets passengers log their own itineraries for later retrieval. Although the site gets high marks for details not offered by other flight tracking apps, there are far fewer interactive features making it more difficult to personalize the way the private travel logs can be viewed.

Many frequent flyers (including the ultimate frequent flyer) swore by Flight Diary. The functions have since morphed into an offshoot of Flight Radar. The jury is still out on whether or not this change has improved the travel log functions or simply bogged down the sometimes glitchy features.

Log My Flight

At first glance, Log My Flight appears to be the simplest app for quickly entering flight information and sharing that information with fellow aviation enthusiasts. Log My Flight has enough graphs, maps and statistical breakdowns to allow for an in-depth Powerpoint presentation of any frequent flyer’s travel history – should the need ever arise. The site offers both a free account and a premium subscription without advertisements.

Old School

“There are apps for this? I’ve been tracking flights, miles, and tail no’s on a giant Excel spreadsheet for the last three years,” FlyerTalker Nephroid wrote. “I think my life just got A LOT easier.”

There are a number of benefits to curating one’s own travel history offline. The chances of a massive data breach exposing your personal details to Eastern European criminal syndicates is reduced substantially when you don’t provide this sort of information to any third party websites at all. Recording travel histories on one’s own computer (or paper ledger) also makes it far less likely that the information will be lost due to technical issues or business failures as apparently happened to a number of FlyerTalk members when the site Jetitup blinked out of existence.

What is your favorite way to save your own personal air travel statistics for the benefit of future generations? There are no wrong answers on the FlyerTalk Travel Tools forum where everything from saving boarding passes to downloading the latest app to scribbling tail numbers on a legal pad are welcome suggestions.

 

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