'AOPA Flight Explorer Personal Edition' now available

Starting today, AOPA members will have the ability to use their personal computers and AOPA Flight Explorer® Personal Edition software to track virtually all airline and many general aviation flights using the U.S. air traffic control system.

"This new AOPA service offers AOPA members real-time situational awareness of air traffic nationwide, as well as allowing tracking of individual flights deviations and diversions," said AOPA President Phil Boyer. "It's a new level of awareness of air traffic operations for our members, another way to help them stay on top of the air traffic situation."

The new service allows AOPA members up to 10 hours per month of real-time tracking for just $8.95, with additional hours available for purchase. It is provided by tracking industry leader Flight Explorer. (Earlier versions of the tracker service remain available to the general public from other vendors, but at a higher price.)

AOPA Flight Explorer® Personal Edition software displays position, speed, altitude, and other information for all airline flights and most GA flights operating under instrument flight rules or using ATC flight following service. Flight Explorer® software may be accessed from the AOPA Web site and, once installed, can retrieve aircraft information updates every 10 seconds.

"AOPA members will especially appreciate the special software controls built into AOPA Flight Explorer® Personal Edition," said Boyer. Members may:

• Zoom in on any desired geographic region;
• Include or exclude navaids, airports, airways, intersections, special-use airspace boundaries, ARTCC boundaries, ATC sector boundaries, a latitude/longitude grid, airport range rings, and much more;
• "Filter" aircraft to be displayed. Filters can be set to show only specific aircraft identifications (or airline prefix), points of origin or destination, aircraft type, altitude range, or any combination. Multiple filters are possible, each with a different display color;
• "Tag" aircraft with flight data blocks, customizing blocks as desired;
• Display aircraft history trails, showing the last several known positions, or velocity vectors projecting the flight track ahead of the aircraft's current position.

The AOPA Flight Explorer® Personal Edition can also display a scrollable "flight list" of all tracked flights in the system and allows data rearrangement by aircraft call sign, type, origin, destination, groundspeed, or altitude.

AOPA members may "test drive" the new AOPA Flight Explorer® Personal Edition service by downloading and installing the demo version (with simulated flight data) found in the members-only section of AOPA Online. Once a member subscribes to the service, a digital key is provided to make the program fully operational.

AOPA, founded in 1939 to help keep general aviation flying fun, safe, and affordable, now represents 375,000 pilots, more than half of all active pilots in the United States today.

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