Nathan Young wrote:
Hello. I am looking for websites that provide real time tracking
info
on IFR flights,. I would like to allow family to track me when I am
on longer flights.

Free would be best, followed by a per flight charge, followed by
monthly service charge.


I agree, free would be best! After all, since taxpayers pay for the
FAA to collect the data and operate their infrastructure, it would make
sense that the data is freely available, like weather data is from the
NOAA.

However, your friends at the FAA, AOPA, FlightExplorer, etc, have all
teamed up to make pilots pay for flight tracking data. If the data was
freely available on the internet in some open format (like XML), there
would be countless free services offering flight tracking with superior
technology to the stuff you can pay for.

Companies like AccuWeather were lobbying for the NOAA to stop freely
distributing the data that taxpayers paid to collect. Ultimately, word
got out about their intentions, complaints ensued, and they didn't
get what they wanted. I'd like that precedent to be applied to the FAA
and flight tracking.

Perhaps a few letters to the FAA and AOPA would help.

Chip