How Jet Tracking Apps Celebs Hate Keep My Love Life Alive

Forty-eight hours after we first met, my future fiancé Dan, an airline pilot, introduced me to FlightAware. The app–which is similar to those that are infamously known for keeping tabs on the likes of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift–allows users to track specific airplanes and flight numbers.

We nicknamed the airplane graphic and flight number on FlightAware “the dot.” Before Dan leaves for a flight he says “I sent you my dot.” Three years later, FlightAware has remained a constant in my life, answering questions—and keeping us connected—while he is soaring in the clouds.

Dan texts me his work schedule before each trip, which includes his flight numbers, the estimated time he leaves and lands, and how much time there is between flights, and hotel details. As a pilot, he will fly between one to three flights each day to different cities in the U.S. and in South America. Following that text he sends a link to each flight—aka his “dots” from FlightAware—so I can follow along.

As he is flying from Atlanta to Baltimore, or Philadelphia to Los Angeles, I can zoom up on the little airplane and watch Dan move in real time. I can see how fast he is going, how high above the Earth he is, where there is weather, and how much longer until he lands the plane.

Tracking a flight could seem strange to others who see their loved ones every day. For us, it’s normal. We both believe a relationship shouldn’t be too complicated if both people want to be in it. His flights are between two and four hours mostly. If his plane is running late, delayed, or canceled, if he is somewhere in South America, it’s like saying hello when I look on FlightAware.

Sometimes being with an airline pilot feels like we have a long-distance relationship because we are face-to-face half of the time. Dan works 15 days each month, and his trips are sporadic, four days usually, sometimes he picks up a day trip or two. Every week is different. It’s a lot to keep up with, which is why FlightAware holds extra importance.

Dan and I were college sweethearts, and I remember when he was just a college kid studying instrument flying and all his heavy flight books in his dorm room. Reconnecting with him 19 years later means Dan isn’t “just a kid” flying a small Cessna plane and wearing a flannel shirt, and I’m not an eccentric college student in heels, a push up bra, and a barely-there dress as an aspiring body part model.

When we re-met, my thirties were ending. I had slime stains on my shirt from my two kids and I was restarting completely after a traumatic divorce when Dan first told me about his office in the sky. A lot had changed—but it turned out that we both had our hearts smashed to smithereens.

While getting to know each other again, I learned he had spent a decade in a marriage that went terribly sour. Flying was the only time he could feel true happiness. The betrayal and breach of trust we both experienced in our past lives still stings as it fades away into a black hole. Although the time that we both spent with the wrong people deepens our value in trust now.

This is why using FlightAware is more than a tracker. I use it because I care about him, and the app makes being apart feel less lonely. FlightAware is used by 10,000 aircraft operators and service providers and over 13,000,000 passengers, and I’m not the only one using it to simply watch a loved one in the sky.

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Spending my life with a pilot means understanding there are gaps of time when we can’t talk. Even if the tracker says Dan landed the plane it takes about 20 to 30 minutes before we can call or text each other because he is taxiing and parking, writing a maintenance report, busy with other post-flight duties, calling a hotel van, or looking for a place to buy a sandwich. He must be at the airport for his flight an hour before it takes off, then he’s usually unavailable and in the cockpit preparing for the flight.

“I landed,” he might text at 7 a.m. after a red-eye flight and I’m making my kids breakfast. While he is at work in the sky, I may check the app multiple times because he may have multiple flights that day. I’ll check the app before driving my kids to soccer practice and find he’s halfway to Las Vegas now. I’ll check it before I go through the drive-thru and see that he’ll be landing soon.

While tracking Dan’s flights has become a part of our relationship, I know not everyone enjoys being tracked while onboard a plane.

There are privacy issues with FlightAware and other real-time location data websites including Flightradar24 and ADS-B Exchange, especially when it comes to celebrities such as Taylor Swift. The Grammy winner recently decided to try to take legal action against a Florida college student who was tracking her flights around the globe via another real-time location tracking website and sharing her movements on a Twitter account. The same college student was blocked in 2022 from Twitter (now X) after tracking Elon Musk’s jet.

Tracking flights and aircraft data has become easier if you know a plane's tail number or flight number or departure airport. Flight data is public information however the FAA offers a service called Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) and aircraft owners can request to have flight data associated with their plane’s tail number restricted from websites like FlightAware.

However, some flight tracking websites do not filter such restricted data. For example, ADS-B Exchange “provides data that other providers do not, such as: military, FAA block list, state, VIP, or commercially filtered aircraft,” according to its website.

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I get it. There are some legitimate privacy and security concerns around real-time flight trackers. But for me and for Dan, it brings us great comfort. I love being able to hold my phone, tap onto an app, and see my fiancé’s whereabouts in the sky. For us, it’s a form of being together.

If Dan has a long flight and if my kids aren’t with me, I’ll go for a long walk. I’ll look up to the clouds and open his flight number on my phone. I imagine Dan flying passengers and people from all walks of life, he is bringing families, children, and grandparents to a place they wish to be.

By day three “I’ll see you soon” becomes “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I’ll send a text message with an emoji of two doves. He sends back to me the last “dot” of his trip and writes the words anyone would love to hear from their partner—regardless of whether or not they're an airline pilot: “I’m on my way to you.”

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