Flighty vs SkyDot: which one do you need on a plane?

They answer different questions

Flighty answers when. When does my flight leave, is it late, which gate, when will it land. It gets those answers from airline and air traffic control data, including the FAA and Eurocontrol, and it is very good at them.

SkyDot answers where. Where am I right now, what is below the window, how fast are we going and how long is left. It gets those answers from the GPS receiver in your phone, which needs no connection at all.

Those two questions overlap only a little, which is why the apps sit well together rather than replacing each other.

What Flighty does offline

When your phone loses its connection, Flighty keeps the last data it downloaded and shows it under the label Offline Mode, estimating all times. It is not tracking your position; it is projecting the flight forward from what it last knew. If the aircraft has wifi, even a messaging-only plan, Flighty can refresh over it.

That is a sensible design for an app built on airline data. The data lives on a server, so without a server the best it can do is estimate. On a flight with no wifi you will see a reasonable guess at arrival, and nothing about where the aircraft is over the ground.

What SkyDot does in the air

You tap Start tracking once you are on board. From then on SkyDot reads GPS with Airplane Mode on and draws your position, route line and trail on an offline map you downloaded before the flight.

The instrument panel shows altitude, ground speed, heading, distance flown and remaining, and time remaining. The arrival time is worked out from distance left along your route divided by your current ground speed, so it reflects how the aircraft is really flying rather than the timetable. An offline lookup of 69,305 towns and 4,045 airports names the place below you, or the sea and how far you are from the nearest city.

When the aircraft lands, SkyDot detects it and saves the flight to your travel log automatically. It does not send a landing notification.

In the 45 minutes before sunrise or sunset it also tells you whether to look left or right, using your live heading and times adjusted for altitude. None of this needs a connection, so it behaves the same on a flight with no wifi as on one with the fastest satellite internet.

Two different arrival times

Both apps show an arrival time in the air, and they are worked out in completely different ways, so it is worth knowing which is which.

Flighty’s offline arrival time is an estimate carried forward from the last airline data it received. If the aircraft picks up a strong tailwind or is held before landing after you lost signal, Flighty has no way to see it until it can connect again.

SkyDot’s arrival time is recalculated continuously from your own GPS: distance left along the route divided by current ground speed. It responds straight away to a tailwind or a slowdown. It knows nothing about holding patterns before they happen or the time it takes to taxi to the gate, and it can swing about during climb and descent when ground speed is changing fast. Treat it as a live estimate of when you reach the destination airport, not a gate arrival time.

On a flight with good wifi, Flighty’s refreshed data is the better guide to when you will actually be at the gate. On a flight without it, SkyDot’s number is the one that is still moving.

Side by side

Checked in September 2026. A dash means we could not confirm it either way. Flighty’s features change often, so its own site is the final word.

Flighty on Android

There is no Flighty for Android. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro, and its Android waitlist page says there are no immediate plans. Aviate launched on Android in July 2026 and describes itself as Android’s answer to Flighty, so that is the place to look if you want delay and gate tracking on an Android phone.

SkyDot is on Android 7.0 and later, so Android users can have the in-flight side covered either way. On Android it runs as a foreground service with a silent ongoing notification showing time remaining and the place below you.

How to use both on one trip

Before you leave, use Flighty for the departure time, the gate and any delay. At the gate, open SkyDot on wifi, look up your flight number to fill in the airports, and make sure your map is downloaded.

Once you are aboard, start tracking in SkyDot and switch on Airplane Mode. Watch the country change under you and check the arrival time against real ground speed. After landing, switch the radios back on and Flighty refreshes with live data again.

Both keep a log. Flighty Passport builds a map and stats of your flights, and SkyDot records distance actually flown, countries crossed and top speed for each one. There is no harm in keeping both.

One practical point: SkyDot’s free tier keeps five saved flights unlocked, with up to ten more earned by watching ads. Later flights are kept on your device and unlock with Premium. Tracking itself is never limited.