Updates, news & flight stories
Release notes, behind-the-scenes posts and tips for getting more out of Skyty.
Sky Briefing #007 — Solar Storm, New Moon and Two Firsts
G3 storm brought aurora to Illinois. New Moon June 14. SAS returns to Mumbai after 17 years. EVA Air launches Taipei–Washington nonstop June 26.
Read post →The jet stream — why your return flight always takes an hour longer
An invisible river of air at cruise altitude that decides how long your transatlantic takes. How it works and why it dictates your itinerary.
Read post →The Bermuda Triangle from FL370 — an honest inventory
The most famous patch of water in conspiracy folklore is also one of the busiest pieces of airspace on Earth. Statistically unremarkable. Mythologically loaded.
Read post →Sky Briefing #006 — Seven Years, Two Planets, One Exit
Delta returns to Hong Kong from LAX on Friday after a seven-year absence. Southwest leaves ORD and Dulles on Wednesday. Venus and Jupiter reach closest approach Monday evening.
Read post →Ten flight routes worth booking the window seat for
A subjective, tested list of the most visually rewarding scheduled flights on Earth. With routing, side, ideal date and a note on when to look.
Read post →Sky Briefing #005 — Galicia, Reykjavik and Two Planets
United opens the first US nonstop to Galicia. Alaska adds Reykjavik one week after London. Venus and Jupiter close in on each other in the western evening sky.
Read post →Skyty Wall is getting a radar theme — and we need testers
A fourth theme for Skyty Wall is in TestFlight: a phosphor-green radar scope with a rotating sweep and polar blips. The spatial answer to "where is that flying right now". We need a few plane-spotters to help us shake it out.
Read post →Mount Everest from the cabin window — and why no scheduled flight goes directly over it
The highest mountain on Earth sits near several flight paths, but almost nothing flies straight over the summit. Why, and what you see instead.
Read post →Sky Briefing #004 — Atlantic Week and a Blue Moon
Alaska flies to Heathrow for the first time. American is first US airline to Budapest nonstop. Aer Lingus brings Pittsburgh to Dublin. Blue Micro Moon on May 31.
Read post →Skyty 1.5 — Position on the watch face, altitude in the corner, signal not required
A full Apple Watch companion app with four complications. Live-synced from your iPhone, with the Watch GPS as fallback — and the same offline-first DNA at cruise altitude.
Read post →Skyty 1.4.2 — Auto-recording stops mistaking your train for a plane
A small but useful patch: auto-recording uses motion sensors to tell flights apart from cars and high-speed trains, so it no longer false-triggers on highways or high-speed rail.
Read post →Skyty Wall in your browser — see the live board before you grab the app
A no-install browser preview of Skyty Wall, streaming live ADS-B data. Pick a location, watch what is overhead, switch to focus mode. Works on phones, tablets, and laptops.
Read post →Why planes cruise at 35,000 feet — and not higher
Cruise altitude is not arbitrary. It is the optimum between fuel efficiency, engine power, and the height at which weather stays below you. Honest version.
Read post →Sky Briefing #003 — Spirit Down, Lights Up
Spirit Airlines shut down on May 2. A G3 geomagnetic storm brings aurora to London latitudes May 15-17. JetBlue flies to Italy for the first time.
Read post →Skyty Wall is here — your live flight board, on the iPad you already own
Skyty Wall is live on the App Store. Universal Purchase across iPhone, iPad and Mac, three themes, €4.99 lifetime. Here is what shipped — and why software beats hardware for this one.
Read post →Skyty 1.4 — Satellites overhead, eclipses ahead, the Equator behind you
Four new Live Events on the offline map: visible satellites, solar and lunar eclipses, noctilucent clouds, and geographic transitions. Plus a one-tap pre-flight cache and an expanded rocket-launch view.
Read post →Meet Skyty Wall — turn any iPad into a flight board
A new Skyty app is on the way: an ambient flight board for iPad, iPhone and Mac. Currently in TestFlight, App Store next. Here is what it does — and why we built it as software.
Read post →Over the North Pole — what polar routes do better than the great circle
East-Coast US to Asia has been flying polar for two decades. What you actually see, and why it is the most underrated transatlantic alternative.
Read post →Sky Briefing #002 — Halley Sends Regards
Eta Aquariid meteor shower peaked at 03:51 UTC today, Alaska launches Seattle to London on May 21, and a robot is loading bags at Haneda.
Read post →Crossing the Sahara by plane — three hours of geology, no breaks
On the southern routes to West Africa or southern Africa, you fly across the largest desert on Earth from above. What you see looks like nowhere else on the planet.
Read post →Skyty 1.3 — Live Events on the offline map
Rocket launches, aurora, active volcanoes, recent earthquakes — cached before the flight, visible on your map during the flight. Plus proper iPad landscape and two new themes.
Read post →What you actually see flying over the Greenland ice sheet
The world's second-largest ice mass sits three hours east of New York and nobody talks about it. A small guide to the most underrated window-seat moment on the transatlantic.
Read post →The loneliest spot on Earth, from a window seat
An hour past Greenland, three hours short of Ireland — at some point you fly over a place where the nearest inhabited island is over 1,000 km away. The middle of the North Atlantic is one of aviation's most underrated views.
Read post →Sky Briefing #001 — Alaska Discovers Europe
Alaska Airlines makes its European debut to Rome, Hawaiian vanishes as a booking system, and Chicago breaks its delay record for 2026.
Read post →Why Skyty and FlightRadar24 work together — and which one to open when
FR24 is a great app. Skyty is a different one. Here is the honest split, from someone who uses both.
Read post →What's coming next: Landmark Spotter, Night Sky and Plane Spotter
Skyty 1.0 shipped in April. Three more releases are planned for the rest of 2026. Here's what's in each, and the thinking behind the order.
Read post →Cramming the entire world into 46 megabytes
How a vector tile pyramid, a clever file format and aggressive zoom-level pruning make it possible to ship the whole planet inside an iOS app — and still meet App Store size limits.
Read post →Privacy by design: why Skyty has zero analytics, zero accounts, zero excuses
Most apps know more about your travel patterns than you do. Skyty doesn't. Here's the architecture that makes that true, not just a marketing claim.
Read post →Record your first flight in under a minute
A quick walkthrough: how to record a flight in Skyty, what gets saved, and how to share or export it after landing.
Read post →A traveler's guide to the window seat: how to read what you're flying over
Sunrises at 35 000 feet, ice fields north of Hudson Bay, the desert ridge that means you're crossing into Iran. A field guide to looking out the window with intent.
Read post →Why we put Protomaps and MapLibre inside the app — instead of using Apple Maps
Apple MapKit is fast, beautiful and free. We don't use it. Here's why an offline-first flight tracker needs an open-source map stack — and what the trade-offs look like.
Read post →MSL, AGL, WGS84: three altitudes you'll see at 35 000 feet
The number on the seat-back display, the GPS altitude in your phone, and your height above the ground are all different — sometimes by hundreds of meters. Here's how to read them.
Read post →Why GPS still works in airplane mode (and how Skyty uses that)
GPS receivers don't transmit anything — they only listen. Here's why your iPhone keeps tracking position the moment you flip airplane mode on, and how Skyty turns that into a flight tracker.
Read post →Skyty 1.0 — why we built an offline flight tracker
Most flight apps die at 10 000 m. Here's why we built one that doesn't, and what it taught us about offline-first iOS.
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