Flight following

[LASTSTOPB4USA]

I was wondering if any PPrune readers can tell me what system they or their company use for Flight Following. At the moment we are using
Flight Explorer 11
But are looking at the market to se what systema re available

[desertopsguy]

Have used flight explorer up until recently, mediocre product at best and some of the worst customer service I have ever seen when it comes to a vendor, the account manager assigned to us didn't get in touch for over a month after we decided to ditch their system. That's a common complaint with regard to Sabre by the way.

Recently saw a demo of Fusion by WSI and loved it but in your post you don't make it clear what data feed you will use. We're using Iridium.

D.O.G

[crundale]

As per D.O.G. big question is how do you intend to feed it.
If you want cheap, then Plane Finder app with an airline filter will work.
If you want an integrated ops, flight planning and global situational display window which has nothing to do with Sabre, and therefore comes with excellent customer service at a price you won't believe, drop me a line.
And if that doesn't make me sound like a used car salesman....
C

[LASTSTOPB4USA]

Thanks desertopsguy..
I will have a chat with our WSI account manager:)

[desertopsguy]

You also don't have to go with one of the big name products, it depends on what you want the system to do.

Best to start with what you need, then see if you have the budget for what you want. All the fancy weather overlays and airport minima alerts are nice to have but not essential as you can do this the old fashioned way.

There are other cheaper systems out there if you just want to see where your aircraft is and be able to call them up in-flight and send/receive basic free-text messages.

Harrier is one, so is Blue Sky Networks, they run off a satcom feed however. You can go light and use a portable unit (mixed results with that but setup runs at a couple of thousand dollars) or you can go integrated and get the antenna and avionics installed on the aircraft, much higher (partially because of the STC requried) cost but golden result. Bluesky offers neat XML feed so you can see what's going on using Google Earth.