Flight tracking

Tracking commercial aviation flights is an activity by enthusiasts or concerned citizens. Tracking is not limited to aircraft activity; it can also include airport activity. Flight tracking via software is a relatively new activity.

Flight/airline tracking, that is the use of flight trackers has been growing due to the obvious reason to know whether a flight has safely landed or whether everything goes according to the schedule so it is indeed the time to go to the airport.

With development of cell phones and other small PDA devices, flight trackers have become a must-have for people who are concerned about arrivals and departures of airplanes. Indeed, modern trackers can track airlines virtually all around the world and inform concerned parties via such commonplace mediums as SMS. The integration of flight tracking into travel management and travel tracking services is a new frontier, allowing increased automation of travel software. This application of flight tracking is currently in its infancy, but is set to grow significantly as systems get more connected.

Despite all the progress, many abrupt events like sudden weather changes are not captured by existing flight trackers because they take their information not from the airplane itself but from dispatcher centers which often do not know the actual status of plane's whereabouts.

...
Wikipedia