Plane and Simple
Point your iPhone at it and its story appears, live in augmented reality. Tap it and it goes in your logbook for good.
Ever wonder about that plane passing overhead? Point your iPhone at it and its story appears: the airline, the flight number, where it took off, where it's headed, how high it is and how far away. All of it floating in your camera view, next to the actual aircraft.
We have always been curious about our surroundings, and the sky is no exception. Anyone who looks up at a contrail wonders where it came from, how high it is, how fast it is going, and whose name is on the tail.
Aim your device at the sky. Plane and Simple finds the aircraft within about 30 kilometres of you in any direction and places each one's details where it actually is, holding position as you turn.
A speck becomes the overnight from Dubai, seven miles up and four minutes from landing. Every glance at the sky turns into something you actually know.
Live flight data from the OpenSky Network, placed in the sky by Apple's ARKit.
Thousands of aircraft cross the sky above you every day, each one carrying people somewhere, following invisible motorways nobody can see from the ground. Plane and Simple makes them legible.
Your camera shows the sky. The app works out which aircraft are up there and where each one sits from where you are standing, then puts its flight number, route, altitude and speed right beside it. Tap one for the full picture: a map of the encounter, the airline, the aircraft type, and a photograph of that exact airframe.
Wonder is the first time. The logbook is every time after that.
Tap an aircraft and it is yours, recorded permanently, with a photograph of the exact airframe. Come back a month later and you have a collection: the airlines you have caught, the types you have seen, the countries their tails are registered in.
Rarity is not a guess. Every type is weighed against a database of more than 91,000 airframes, so when the app says a catch is uncommon, it is telling you how many of that aircraft are left in the world. There are twenty achievements to find, three of them hidden, and the best of them are the ones you cannot go looking for: catching the same aircraft twice on different days, or the same route flown in both directions.
Every first meeting with an airframe is marked as new to you, with its running number. It all syncs to your own iCloud, so a new phone never costs you the collection, and the whole logbook exports as a spreadsheet whenever you want it.
Your sky, with the plane marked.
Every sighting can become a card made from the photograph you took: the aircraft ringed where it actually was, its contrail running the way it was actually flying, and underneath it the route, the type and the tail number.
No filters, no stickers. Just the thing you saw, and enough detail that whoever you send it to understands why you looked up.
Free. No adverts. Nothing to sign up for.
Positions, altitudes, speeds and headings from the OpenSky Network, updated as aircraft move through the sky above you.
Routes for hundreds of thousands of flights are built into the app, so origin and destination appear instantly, even with no signal.
Every aircraft you tap is kept: the airline, the airframe, the route, a photo of the plane itself, and where you were standing when you saw it.
Each type is measured against more than 91,000 airframes, so you know whether you have caught something ordinary or something with 270 left in the world.
From your first aircraft to catching an airline's flight number one. Three are hidden, and none of them reward opening the app, only looking up.
Turn on Game Center from the logbook and your achievements and aircraft count appear to your friends, with two leaderboards: all time, and new aircraft this week. Off by default.
Siri, the Action Button, Control Center, Lock Screen and Home Screen widgets all open Plane and Simple with the camera already up. No splash screen.
Export the whole logbook as a spreadsheet from the logbook menu. Nothing is locked inside the app.
Your logbook lives on your device and syncs through your own iCloud. Nothing is uploaded to us, there is no account to create, and Game Center only ever sees your achievements and your aircraft count.
Get the camera up before it is gone.
Say “Spot a plane with Plane and Simple” to Siri, or put Spot a Plane on the Action Button, in Control Center, on the Lock Screen or on your Home Screen. Back Tap and Spotlight work too. Every one of them skips the splash screen and opens straight into the camera.
Plane and Simple uses ARKit, the camera and the compass together, which asks a little of the hardware.
iPhone: iPhone XS, XR or newer, running iOS 18.5 or later.
iPad: iPad (7th generation) or newer, running iPadOS 18.5 or later.
Best outdoors with a clear view of the sky. A working compass matters: if aircraft appear in the wrong place, calibrate it by moving your device in a figure of eight.
Turn your curiosity into discovery.