I found www.flightstats.com is a cool way to track flights. It is a static interface and it shows the Google Map with the hybrid view selected you can see the terrain and cities as well as the highways with the Estimated time of arrival distance since departure and distance to destination. It is free. I know Flyertalk does not like advertising but this is a cool tool to use when tracking flights. I think this is one of the better ones that don't charge.