If you are looking for a flight tracker app for NRI families, the question is not "which app is the most accurate." If half your family is in Delhi and the other half is in New Jersey, that is not the question either. It is "which app lets Mom stop refreshing the airline's website and just see, on her own phone, that the flight landed." That is a sharing problem before it is a tracking problem, and the four apps below answer it very differently, based on what each one's own store listing and pricing page say. We checked all of it on 2026-09-09, with the source and date on every fact below.
What "family tracking" actually needs to do
A family split across two countries is not the aviation-enthusiast use case most flight trackers were built for. Nobody in this group wants a 3D map or a fleet-history export. What they want is simple: one person on the plane, several people waiting on two continents, and a way for all of them to see the same status without a WhatsApp thread of "landed yet?" messages every twenty minutes. That means the feature that matters most is not tracking depth, it is sharing: can more than one person see the flight, and can they do it on whatever phone they already own.
With that job in mind, here is what four widely used apps actually offer, in their own words, and where TrackMyWings fits into the picture today.
Flighty: built for sharing, but Apple only
Flighty's own App Store page, checked 2026-09-09, is unambiguous about the hardware it runs on: "Requires iOS 18.0 or later" for iPhone, plus separate lines for iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision. A search of that full capture for the word "Android" returns zero matches. If your family is entirely on iPhones, this is worth knowing; if even one relative is on Android, it rules Flighty out for that person on the spot.
What Flighty does well, in its own words: its pricing page (checked 2026-09-09) describes the free version as including "unlimited flight tracking, live pilot-grade data, Flighty Passport, access to Flighty Friends." Flighty Friends is the feature built specifically for this job, letting the traveller share a flight with the people waiting on them. Flighty Passport, the same free tier, keeps a personal flight history. The App Store page also shows an Editors' Choice badge and a 4.8 rating from 151K ratings, version 4.10.1, as of that capture.
Two real strengths, sourced from Flighty's own pages: a sharing feature purpose-built for exactly the "who's waiting" job, and a free tier that includes it rather than paywalling it. The one hard limit is the platform: this only works if everyone involved is on Apple hardware.
byAir: the one with a Hindi interface
byAir's Play Store listing, checked 2026-09-09, covers more ground on platforms: Android (package com.byairapp.android) and iOS (App Store id 6468928108), plus Apple Watch and Wear OS support, with the listing's own form-factor line reading Phone, Watch, Tablet. That already solves the mixed-household problem Flighty cannot.
The sharing feature is named directly on the Play listing: "Friends and Family Sharing by invite link," described there with the line "No more 'landed yet?' texts." That is the exact job this article is about, stated by the vendor rather than by us. byAir's site also runs a 20-locale structure that includes a Hindi version: a crawl of the site on 2026-09-09 found /hi alongside /hi/faq and /hi/features/* pages. For a family where not everyone reads English comfortably, that is a genuine point of difference from the other three apps here, none of which localise to Hindi.
Two named strengths: cross-platform reach (Android and iOS both, unlike Flighty), and a Hindi-language interface, which none of the other apps in this list offer. The gap is pricing: byAir's own Play listing shows only the words "In-app purchases" with no amounts attached, and its comparison page names no figures either, so this article does not print a byAir price because byAir has not published one anywhere we could find.
Flightradar24 and FlightAware: built for something else
Both of these are real, widely used apps, and both are worth naming honestly for what they are rather than forcing them into a family-sharing comparison they were not built for.
Flightradar24 runs on the web, iOS and Android. Its own FAQ, checked 2026-09-09, states "Track flights on the web or in our iOS and Android mobile apps." That is the broadest platform reach of any app on this list, wider than Flighty's Apple-only lineup and adding a full web client on top of what byAir offers. Its free tier, per its own Compare Plans table on the same date, still works without paying: a saved bookmark and seven days of flight history are included alongside ads throughout the app and site, a permanent ad sidebar on the map, and a website session that times out after 30 minutes. None of that free-tier detail is a criticism; it is simply what the vendor's own plan table says the free version includes, and it is not built around a shared family view.
FlightAware, also checked 2026-09-09, runs on web, iOS and Android too, giving it the same broad platform reach as Flightradar24. Its free "Basic" tier covers 5 flight tracking alerts, 5 saved aircraft and 3 saved airports at no cost, per its own Compare Subscriptions table, enough for a family doing light tracking without a subscription. Its paid tiers, by contrast, are priced for operators rather than families: one of three paid tiers, from Premium+ at $44.95 a month up to Enterprise WX at $149.95 a month. That is a professional dispatch price point, not a family one.
The honest read: both apps are strong at the tracking half of the job, on more platforms than either Flighty or byAir, and neither one's own listing describes a family-sharing feature the way Flighty or byAir do.
Where TrackMyWings fits today
TrackMyWings™ is our own product, and the facts above about Flighty, byAir, Flightradar24 and FlightAware were checked against their own store listings and pricing pages on 2026-09-09, linked below. Here is where we honestly stand next to them right now, rather than where we hope to.
A private beta of TrackMyWings shipped on 2026-08-24. It is Android only, running on the Play internal testing track with a small group of named testers. Public launch has no fixed date; it is gated on trade-mark clearance and on the app being good enough to earn the download.
A shared family view is on the planned-at-launch list, written in future tense because it has not shipped yet. That is the same job Flighty's Friends feature and byAir's invite-link sharing already do today, and today we do not have a public answer to it. When it ships, it will be for the free tier's Delhi to New York travellers as much as anyone, tracking a flight on Air India between Delhi and New York or any other route. Until it does, this article is a comparison of what exists today, and Flighty and byAir are the two entries on this list that actually solve the sharing problem this week.
Quick comparison
| App | Platforms | Family-sharing feature | Free tier (per vendor, 2026-09-09) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flighty | iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS only | Flighty Friends, included free | Unlimited tracking, Flighty Passport, Flighty Friends | No Android; strongest sharing feature if everyone is on Apple hardware |
| byAir | Android and iOS, plus Wear OS | Friends and Family Sharing by invite link | Free to install with in-app purchases (unpriced) | Only one here with a Hindi-language site |
| Flightradar24 | Web, iOS, Android | None named on its own plan table | Ads, 1 bookmark, 7-day history, 30-min session cap | Built for tracking depth, not family sharing |
| FlightAware | Web, iOS, Android | None named on its own plan table | 5 alerts, 5 saved aircraft, 3 saved airports | Paid tiers priced for operators, from $44.95/month |
| TrackMyWings™ (private beta) | Android only, Play internal testing track | Planned, not shipped | Free (Limited), 3 watchlist slots, planned | No fixed public launch date |
Questions people ask
Which app lets my family see my flight without messaging everyone separately? Of the apps checked here, Flighty (Flighty Friends) and byAir (Friends and Family Sharing by invite link) both name this exact feature on their own listings, checked 2026-09-09. Flightradar24 and FlightAware do not name an equivalent sharing feature on their own plan tables.
Does any of these work well for a Delhi-to-New York flight? All four apps track scheduled Delhi to New York routes in general; this article does not rate any of them on tracking accuracy or coverage, only on the family-sharing feature each vendor publishes.
My family isn't all on iPhones. Does that rule out Flighty? Flighty's own App Store compatibility block, checked 2026-09-09, lists iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision only, with zero matches for "Android" in the full capture. If even one person in the family is on Android, Flighty will not work for that person.
Is there a Hindi-language flight tracker?
Of the apps here, byAir is the one with a Hindi interface: a site crawl on 2026-09-09 found a /hi locale with its own FAQ and feature pages. None of the other three apps in this comparison offer that.
When can my family use TrackMyWings for this? Not yet publicly. A private beta shipped 2026-08-24 on Android only, to a small named-tester group, and public launch has no fixed date. A shared family view is planned for launch and described on our family tracking feature page, in future tense because it has not shipped.
Sources
- Flighty on the App Store (US storefront): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flighty-live-flight-tracker/id1358823008, captured 2026-09-09
- Flighty pricing: https://flighty.com/pricing, captured 2026-09-09
- byAir on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.byairapp.android, captured 2026-09-09
- byAir comparison page: https://byairapp.com/compare/flighty, captured 2026-09-09
- Flightradar24 plans: https://www.flightradar24.com/premium/, captured 2026-09-09
- FlightAware plans: https://www.flightaware.com/commercial/premium/, captured 2026-09-09
Get TrackMyWings Early Access
Real-time flight tracking, gate change alerts, and family sharing: launching soon.