The best offline flight tracker apps in 2026

There are two kinds of flight tracker

Most apps people call flight trackers are network trackers. Flightradar24, FlightAware and Plane Finder collect aircraft positions from receivers on the ground and send them to your phone over the internet. They show the whole sky, and they stop the moment your phone loses its connection.

The second kind reads the GPS receiver inside your phone. GPS only receives, so it keeps working with Airplane Mode on and Location left on. Pair it with a map stored on the device and you get a moving map of your own flight with no wifi at all. What you give up is everything else in the sky: no other aircraft, no delays, no gates.

Why Flightradar24, FlightAware and Flighty do not make the list

Flightradar24 and FlightAware are excellent at what they do, and what they do needs a server. Neither has an offline mode for live positions. In the air they only work if the aircraft has wifi and you are paying for, or have been given, a connection that can carry a live feed.

Flighty is closer, but still not an offline tracker. It works from airline and air traffic control data rather than phone GPS. When it loses connection it keeps the last data it downloaded and labels the screen Offline Mode, estimating all times. That is useful for knowing roughly when you land. It does not show where you actually are.

All three are worth having on the ground. They are just answering a different question from the apps below.

The six apps that work in Airplane Mode

SkyDot (iOS and Android). A flight instrument panel over an offline vector map: altitude, ground speed, heading, time remaining and an arrival time worked out from your real ground speed. An offline place-name lookup tells you the town, country or sea below you. It detects landing and saves the flight into a travel log on its own, and in the last 45 minutes before sunrise or sunset it tells you which side of the aircraft to look. You start tracking yourself with one tap. The world basemap is free; detailed regional map packs come with Premium, or one region can be unlocked by watching an ad.

Flyover Country (iOS and Android). Built at the University of Minnesota with National Science Foundation funding, and completely free. You download maps and stories along your route before takeoff. Its strength is geology: rock and fossil maps, Wikipedia articles along the way, ocean-floor depth, and in the new 3.0 version a 3D globe and augmented reality landmark labels.

Flymap (iOS and Android). You download the corridor your flight will follow, then see your live GPS position, altitude and speed with points of interest along the way. It also offers offline Wikipedia packs.

FlyingOver (iOS and Android). Offline route maps with speed and altitude in Airplane Mode, a FlightBook history of past flights, and gate alerts on the ground. When GPS is unavailable it estimates your position from the schedule, which keeps something on screen from a middle seat.

Inflight Map (iOS). A paid-once app focused on numbers: GPS speed and altitude, barometric altitude, distance to airports and GPX export of your track. Detailed maps need an internet connection, so plan for a plainer map in the air.

Flight Mode Map (iPhone). Also paid once. You cache maps before takeoff and get GPS altitude, speed and barometric altitude.

Side by side

This compares what each app says it does, as checked in September 2026. Pricing models change, so confirm in the store before you rely on one.

Which one to pick

Pick Flyover Country if you want to learn about the ground below. The geology content is genuinely deep, it costs nothing, and nobody else does it.

Pick SkyDot if you want to know where you are and how long is left at a glance, and you want every flight logged without typing anything. It suits people who fly often and like looking back at countries crossed and distance flown over a year.

Pick Inflight Map if you want the raw data and a GPX file of your track to take elsewhere. SkyDot does not export its log.

Pick FlyingOver if you want one app that covers gate alerts before boarding as well as the map in the air.

Pick Flymap if a downloaded route corridor with points of interest along it is the way you like to plan.

Keep Flightradar24, FlightAware or Flighty as well. None of the offline apps shows delays or gates from airline data.

Getting any of them to work in the air

Download maps on wifi before you leave home or at the gate. Once the doors close there is nothing to download them over.

Leave Location on when you switch on Airplane Mode, and sit by a window if you can. The fuselage weakens satellite signal, and without mobile data your phone cannot use assisted GPS, so the first fix can take a couple of minutes. Once it has a fix it holds it well.

Check the rules for the flight you are on. Under FAA guidance from 2013, airlines can allow portable electronics in Airplane Mode through every phase of flight, and GPS receivers are named in it. EASA lets European airlines do the same after their own assessment. On the rare low-visibility landing the crew may ask everyone to switch devices off, and that request wins.

Expect accuracy to be good rather than perfect. GPS.gov puts typical smartphone accuracy at about 4.9 metres under open sky, and a cabin is not open sky. For a map at cruise that is more than enough; it is not a navigation instrument and none of these apps claims to be.