Why does Flightradar24 stop working on a plane?
Flightradar24 streams aircraft positions from ground receivers over the internet, so the moment you lose signal the map stops at the last thing it managed to load. Every live tracker has this problem — FlightAware, Plane Finder, RadarBox — because the data lives on a server rather than on your phone. Only your own position can be worked out offline.
What Flightradar24 is actually doing
Aircraft broadcast their position over ADS-B. A network of volunteer receivers on the ground picks those broadcasts up, sends them to Flightradar24, and Flightradar24 sends them to your phone over the internet. That is a genuinely impressive piece of infrastructure and it is why you can watch traffic anywhere in the world from your sofa.
It also means every aircraft you see on that map arrived through a server. Your phone is not listening to anything. It is downloading a picture that somebody else assembled.
Why that breaks at cruise altitude
Airplane Mode switches off cellular and wifi, so there is no route to the server and nothing new to draw. The map holds whatever it had at the gate and the aircraft symbol stops moving. Reopening the app does not help; the data was never on the device.
Paying for inflight wifi does not reliably fix it either. Plenty of aircraft have no internet at all — Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2, Frontier and Allegiant among them — and easyJet and TUI carry an onboard portal that looks like wifi from the settings screen and has no route out. Where connectivity does exist it is often too slow for a live traffic feed to be worth watching.
Every live tracker shares the architecture
This is not a flaw in one app and there is no setting that fixes it. Anything showing you other aircraft has to fetch them, because other aircraft are not something your phone can detect on its own. Airliners do not carry an ADS-B receiver for passengers, and a phone cannot pick up ADS-B without one.
| App | Where positions come from | Works in Airplane Mode |
|---|---|---|
| Flightradar24 | Streamed from ground receivers | No |
| FlightAware | Streamed from ground receivers | No |
| Plane Finder | Streamed from ground receivers | No |
| RadarBox | Streamed from ground receivers | No |
| ADS-B Exchange | Streamed from ground receivers | No |
| SkyDot | GPS receiver in your phone | Yes — your own flight |
What can be done offline, and what cannot
One thing survives the loss of signal: where you are. GPS satellites transmit and your phone receives, so your own position, altitude, ground speed and heading are all computable in your seat with every radio switched off. Add a map downloaded before departure and a place-name lookup stored on the device, and you have a moving map that does not need anyone.
What cannot be done offline is the rest of the sky. SkyDot does not show other aircraft and never will, because that would need the same server everything else needs. If watching traffic is what you want, Flightradar24 is the right tool and you want it on the ground.
- Your position
- Offline
- Other aircraft
- Needs a server
The sensible arrangement is both
Flightradar24 before you board and after you land: watch the inbound aircraft, check whether it is running late, see where it came from. SkyDot from pushback to gate: your own position over a stored map, the country below the window, the log written for you.
They are answering different questions. One needs the internet and one deliberately does not.
Questions
Does Flightradar24 work in Airplane Mode?
No. Flightradar24 needs an internet connection to fetch aircraft positions from its servers, and Airplane Mode switches off the radios that would carry that connection. The map freezes on whatever it last downloaded.
Does Flightradar24 have an offline mode?
Not for live traffic. There is no way to store other aircraft in advance, because their positions do not exist until they happen. Anything an app can show you offline has to be computed on your phone, and your own GPS position is the only part of the picture that qualifies.
Is there a flight tracker that works without internet?
For your own flight, yes. Your phone’s GPS works with every radio off, so an app with maps stored on the device can show your position, altitude, speed and the place below for the whole flight. For other aircraft, no — that data only exists on a server.
Will buying inflight wifi make Flightradar24 work?
Sometimes, and often not. Many aircraft have no onboard internet to buy — Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2, Frontier and Allegiant among them — and some carry a local entertainment portal that your phone joins as wifi but that has no route to the internet. Where a real connection exists it may still be too slow to be worth it for a live traffic feed.
Is SkyDot a Flightradar24 alternative?
Not a replacement, no. Flightradar24 shows you every aircraft in the sky and needs a connection to do it. SkyDot shows you your own aircraft and needs nothing. If you want to watch traffic, keep Flightradar24. If you want to know where you are at 38,000 feet with the radios off, that is the job SkyDot does.
Flightradar24 is a trademark of Flightradar24 AB. SkyDot is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Flightradar24 AB. FlightAware, Plane Finder, RadarBox and ADS-B Exchange are trademarks of their respective owners, named here only to describe how each service works.