Review Insights · App Store
FlightDeck - Flight Tracker
Attracts · 552 ratings · ★ 4.5
4.5
★★★★★
552 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 54 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"free"
23 negative reviews mention this · 43% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The 3day free flight deck buy thingy. When I tried to buy the free FlightDeck 3 days it just kept going up and down while gray would not load" - caboza808
2
"flight"
15 negative reviews mention this · 28% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The 3day free flight deck buy thingy. When I tried to buy the free FlightDeck 3 days it just kept going up and down while gray would not load" - caboza808
3
"subscription"
11 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "After a bit it is IMPOSSIBLE to use. I was really looking forward to getting this app for the ACARS messages. After downloading the app and canceling the free subscription so I didn’t have to pay, everything was well. I was pleased with what I could look at and see on this app…" - Ducksauce_snorter
4
"other"
10 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just why. So I been getting recommended this app from YouTube for a while and I was thinking I should get it so I got this app because it looks fun and interesting to see ACARS messages so the first steps are just easy until you get to the 3 day free…" - TyMop6
5
"trial"
9 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just why. So I been getting recommended this app from YouTube for a while and I was thinking I should get it so I got this app because it looks fun and interesting to see ACARS messages so the first steps are just easy until you get to the 3 day free…" - TyMop6
6
"tutorial"
9 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Every loads incredibly slow, if at all(14pro). I’m super disappointed I went with this over flightradar, especially considering the significantly higher cost. I’ll regularly open the app to identify a plane, wait 30 seconds while nothing loads, open flightradar, watch an ad and then ide…" - Echo776
7
"acars"
8 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just why. So I been getting recommended this app from YouTube for a while and I was thinking I should get it so I got this app because it looks fun and interesting to see ACARS messages so the first steps are just easy until you get to the 3 day free…" - TyMop6
8
"money"
8 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Cost. It cost money flightradar24 is better" - Bob_the_NASCARfan
9
"paywall"
8 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Worlds longest onboarding. You go through 15 minutes of onboarding just for the app to be fully blocked by a paywall. I previously left this review and returned to see the developer reset all reviews. The app needs a lot of work" - thomasj095
10
"messages"
7 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just why. So I been getting recommended this app from YouTube for a while and I was thinking I should get it so I got this app because it looks fun and interesting to see ACARS messages so the first steps are just easy until you get to the 3 day free…" - TyMop6
11
"free trial"
7 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just why. So I been getting recommended this app from YouTube for a while and I was thinking I should get it so I got this app because it looks fun and interesting to see ACARS messages so the first steps are just easy until you get to the 3 day free…" - TyMop6
12
"doesn"
7 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Can’t even test the app. The UI looks nice in the screenshots, but I’ll never know how it actually performs because there is no free tier or trial that doesn’t require a credit card upfront. Listing an app as “Free” on the App Store when it has zero functionality w…" - dis de las madres
📋 All 54 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
The 3day free flight deck buy thingy
When I tried to buy the free FlightDeck 3 days it just kept going up and down while gray would not load
Just why
So I been getting recommended this app from YouTube for a while and I was thinking I should get it so I got this app because it looks fun and interesting to see ACARS messages so the first steps are just easy until you get to the 3 day free trial which there is no other god Danm button to say no thank you, and you would proceed to track with some limitations but no you have to click yes and you have to pay! You cannot click anywhere else to say no! This app should be updated immediately because having an app that you need to pay to get in, it’s just a scam!
Cost
It cost money flightradar24 is better
After a bit it is IMPOSSIBLE to use
I was really looking forward to getting this app for the ACARS messages. After downloading the app and canceling the free subscription so I didn’t have to pay, everything was well. I was pleased with what I could look at and see on this app but after a bit it was forcing me to buy the “pro” version. No matter what I did I couldn’t get off the screen, nor cancel the subscription in time to use the free version. Ether this is a bug or most likely it’s a scummy way of making money. I don’t even think that anyone should be paying that much for the pro version! One out of five stars, I really had high hopes.
Who paying for ts
Make it free if ur gon make a faulty app
Bad report
I just wanted to see planes on flight radar and decide to download the app but as I wanted to see planes I put
(“I’M NEW TO HERE”) I didn’t want to pay to use the app so I got mad and got (“flight radar 24”) was better this is trash.
(“I’M NEW TO HERE”) I didn’t want to pay to use the app so I got mad and got (“flight radar 24”) was better this is trash.
I can’t even get in the app
I downloaded the app so I can use it and I need to purchase a subscription that I don’t want?? I tryed exiting it but I can’t because of a stupid pay wall
Every loads incredibly slow, if at all(14pro)
I’m super disappointed I went with this over flightradar, especially considering the significantly higher cost. I’ll regularly open the app to identify a plane, wait 30 seconds while nothing loads, open flightradar, watch an ad and then identify the flight on flightradar before switching back to flight deck before anything loads, if it even loads at all. Finally fed up enough to right this because I’m sitting here and there’s not a single flight over the entire US showing on the map. Map is set to default settings. I never hear any of the radio messages either, can’t hear ATC audio. I don’t know. Maybe I’m dumb and need a tutorial, but either way, I’m not enjoying the app.
Got scammed out of $12.99
Signed up for the three-day free trial. Only used the app for a few minutes before cancelling. A $12.99 charge showed up from the App Store. I requested a refund and was denied.
Over priced
Waste of money
No free features, zero?!
Just downloaded and already uninstalled. You’re immediately required to buy it, can’t move past the splash screen, meaning there isn’t a single feature available for free. Bit misleading if you ask me.
Misleading subscription information
Subscription was canceled within the free trial on the first day that I began it. I was still charged the full price three days later and Apple was unable to refund the charge because of misleading terms within the app itself. I didn’t even have access to the app that I paid for unwillingly because it was canceled before the free trial ended. Beware of being tricked into this scam.
Better options
Poor interface and coverage
Not a free App
Advertised as a free app and you can’t even see the home page without having to pay $70 a year. Not worth it. I’ve also heard from friends that the acars messages are fake and way too many alerts.
Requires a subscription
Cannot do anything in this app without signing up for a subscription. Save your money and use one of the many other free flight trackers.
ONLY PAID OPTIONS
I was so excited at the idea to see the transcript instead of listening to the liveatc option (which is free online and fun to do on flights). Alas they will not provide a single second of a free trial without giving a credit card when they only have 200 reviews. You cannot make money immediately without having a trial phase to see if it’s worth paying for. I have no problem paying the full price and more if it does what it says it does in the ad. I subscribe to all the other flight tracking apps. But you cannot expect to make money during the roll out. Why should I trust you? I wish you the best and I hope it works.
Could Not Find My Flight
Kept running into AeroAPI errors. Did not give me the confidence this app is ready for prime time and an expensive subscription.
Barely works…
Why would you pay for this
Wrong flight info
Trying the 3 day trial and every flight I click on on the map shows wrong flight info. Plane obviously just left ORD and the info shows it inbound to ORD from Savannah. I checked several flights that are obviously inbound to Chicago and the flight info shows going from Chicago to other airports.
Why pay
Why do you need to pay like if you said it’s free for three days don’t make us pay
Worlds longest onboarding
You go through 15 minutes of onboarding just for the app to be fully blocked by a paywall. I previously left this review and returned to see the developer reset all reviews. The app needs a lot of work
Should still be in beta
Do not buy the annual subscription. This app has tons of potential, but should still be in the TestFlight beta stage. If you want to try it, only do a month and cancel. It’s buggy, turning off ACARS notifications doesn’t turn off notification. I’m not normally one to trash an app, but it’s unfair to be charging money for an incomplete product. The UI, while pretty, is not polished. There’s no basic flight times / gates for tracking a flight. ACARS is cool, but sometimes includes messages from an earlier flight. Right now, this is a cool experimental app, not actually useful.
This app does have lots of potential though. I cancelled my subscription for now, and don’t recommend anyone get one at least until the end of 2026 when they hopefully iron everything out.
I’ll be back in a couple months to try it again. I’d really like this to replace FlightAware/FlightRadar in the future.
This app does have lots of potential though. I cancelled my subscription for now, and don’t recommend anyone get one at least until the end of 2026 when they hopefully iron everything out.
I’ll be back in a couple months to try it again. I’d really like this to replace FlightAware/FlightRadar in the future.
Not free
Complete waste of time, made me do a 15 minute tutorial just to be greeted with a paywall. You cannot use the app at all without paying.
Endless intro to app
Just let me use the app instead it’s some endless unskippable intro
Allow tutorial to be skippable
The tutorial is a waste of time and should be skippable
Do not download
The app forces you to go through a 10 minute long tutorial where they repeat the same thing 5 times only to ask that you pay $50 to use it at all. Also AI is bad
Useless
Acars data showing messages from different flights, completely useless app
Absurd Pricing
Went through 50 steps and questions to finally get the app going to only be met with a paywall. Like the other “Ai” ATC app on the AppStore. Would give this one a 0/5 stars if I could. Mind boggling these “developers” are scavenging money with insane pricing plans to make a quick buck. Sad to see aviation come to this with greedy people.
You’re paying for free information
So you downloaded the app, great. Here’s a 10 minute, unskippable tutorial, in case you’ve never used a touch screen in your life. At the end, there’s no free trial just a mandatory pay wall to see if you like it, all for giving you information that’s readily available from the FAS website. Apple Maps for your underlying satellite imagery? It’s 2026.
Better Pricing Transparency
The long tutorial followed by the necessary to subscribe is pretty tacky. A little transparency goes a long way.
Misleading
Why would I pay 50 dollars a year for something I get for free on other apps?
Paywalled and Annoying Tutorial
Another one of these paywall apps that you can’t even really try just an annoying tutorial might pay for something that I don’t know will be good.
Annoying
I’ve never encountered an app with such an annoying, unavoidable intro/tutorial only to get to a paywall. Immediately uninstalled.
bad
5 min unskippable intro video only for the whole app to be locked behind a paywall
don’t download
made me sit thru a long “tutorial” just to hit me with a paywall they hide the entire app behind…
Looks like a cool app but requires subscription.
This app looks neat in theory but you can’t even explore it unless you spend over twenty dollars a month on the subscription!
AI Slop. Laggy
This app doesn’t provide anything you can’t find for free anywhere else.
Flight tracking
It costs either $5 a week to use or $50 a year and with all the other free options out there this would need to be way cheaper to make it worth it. Better then others just cost is way too much plus the flight map I think is worse compared to Plane Finder.
No free options
You can’t use the app unless you pay for a subscription there’s no point of getting it unless you care that much about spotting planes.
Can’t even test the app
The UI looks nice in the screenshots, but I’ll never know how it actually performs because there is no free tier or trial that doesn’t require a credit card upfront. Listing an app as “Free” on the App Store when it has zero functionality without a paid Pro subscription is misleading. I’d give it more stars if I could actually try the features first.
Expensive
Very expensive subscription required to even open the app. There’s zero free features.
Be careful
Mildly interesting, but I wasn’t given the full three days to evaluate. All of the sudden I was charged for a full year before I had a chance to cancel, and support does not respond.
Buggy. Very frustrating to use.
The app works at first load. But once you start to search for flights or aircraft, once you return to the map all the planes are gone.
The map doesn't always seem to load the planes. The track flight or the search function seems to pull up the flight info but the map is missing the plane.
Lastly in the search bar, searching the flight number doesn't really work; I've not gotten it to return a flight info. When I search a registration number (which I find with other apps) the result pops up but I can't click the ACARS messages or output.
Overall this idea is neat, but the app is very frustrating to use.
The map doesn't always seem to load the planes. The track flight or the search function seems to pull up the flight info but the map is missing the plane.
Lastly in the search bar, searching the flight number doesn't really work; I've not gotten it to return a flight info. When I search a registration number (which I find with other apps) the result pops up but I can't click the ACARS messages or output.
Overall this idea is neat, but the app is very frustrating to use.
Pointless flight tracking
This app provides near constant push notifications, usually about things I don’t care about - like a passenger needing anti nausea meds, or a flight holding over North Carolina. It also provides these notifications with very little context, some with lots of aviation jargon; “hold at MAIVE until bingo, at bingo divert to KIAD” (???)
Also, clicking on these notifications has led me to multiple instances of “this flight is no longer operating, tracking ended” or similar.
There’s no way I’d pay $12.99 a WEEK for this (ridiculous) or even the more palatable $69 a year - it’s mostly just junk info.
Also, clicking on these notifications has led me to multiple instances of “this flight is no longer operating, tracking ended” or similar.
There’s no way I’d pay $12.99 a WEEK for this (ridiculous) or even the more palatable $69 a year - it’s mostly just junk info.
It has potential, but still flawed.
You get a sense this app relies more heavily on AI, and not in a good way. It doesn’t appear you can list all of your upcoming flights, and are limited to tracking one specific flight at a time on the homepage. When airports have ground delays or ground stops, the text box containing the full message is truncated and you cannot click to expand it. The weather at airports and other data is off - for instance it said current conditions at DAL are 78° with snow. The real-time security wait times is helpful. The ACARS alerts are nice but need more personalization capabilities - they are quite random worldwide.
I don’t know why this app has more than 2 stars…
Got the app, looked really cool with features other apps didn’t. Started to pay the subscription which I was ok with despite it being pretty high, if it could indeed deliver on its promises.
It doesn’t..
Each time I tried to put in a flight number to search, it found it just fine but when I try to track it I get “no token for this device” whatever that means…
If I pull up the map and select an aircraft, it gives me the same data most other apps do but when I press the button for track this flight I get a “cannot tack at this time try again in a moment” or something to that effect..
Hit me up again when all your functions work then we can talk about if it’s worth $70 a year. Or what ever the rate is.
It doesn’t..
Each time I tried to put in a flight number to search, it found it just fine but when I try to track it I get “no token for this device” whatever that means…
If I pull up the map and select an aircraft, it gives me the same data most other apps do but when I press the button for track this flight I get a “cannot tack at this time try again in a moment” or something to that effect..
Hit me up again when all your functions work then we can talk about if it’s worth $70 a year. Or what ever the rate is.
Billed for free trial
App works alright, doesn’t have live speed or altitude like Flightradar does.
Worst part was that it said I’d get a 3 day trial but immediately charged me. That for me is an immediate no go. If you want to bill me an exorbitant amount and mess that up, I’m done.
Worst part was that it said I’d get a 3 day trial but immediately charged me. That for me is an immediate no go. If you want to bill me an exorbitant amount and mess that up, I’m done.
Buggy app
I like the data this app provides but the search is useless and hard to navigate
Got my 6.99 but no more!
The app has potential however flight information is incorrect as I’m watching flights heading towards San Antonio but saying it’s landing in Fort Lauderdale and the times are incorrect. Seems that they get delayed or out of date information. App needs a lot more work before it can be a competitor. I’ll continue to use another flight tracker that I use for now.
Not ready for prime time yet
I thought this would be a companion or replacement to Flight Radar 24 but it’s not ready yet. Funny seeing ACARS message so easily available. The map is laggy on scrolling, selecting airplanes, and viewing information on the flight. Even on the lowest setting there is an insane amount of notifications.
+ 4 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
89%
Positive (4-5★)
2%
Neutral (3★)
10%
Negative (1-2★)