Plane and Simple
Point your iPhone or iPad at any plane and watch its story appear — live, in augmented reality.
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 60 kilometres of you 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. 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 nineteen achievements to find, two of them secret, 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.
It all syncs to your own iCloud, so a new phone never costs you the collection.
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, 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. Two are secret, and none of them reward opening the app — only looking up.
Your logbook lives on your device and syncs through your own iCloud. Nothing is uploaded to us, and there is no account to create.
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.