Flight diary apps compared: log and analyze your own flights

You note every registration at the fence, but what about the flights you sit on yourself? A flight diary records which airline, which aircraft type and which individual aircraft you flew from where to where. After a few years it turns into statistics that tell a surprising amount: how many kilometers add up, which types you are still missing and which airports you only know from connecting. There are specialized apps and web services for keeping one. This comparison shows how they differ and which one suits you.

The short answer

There are roughly two kinds of apps for flight diaries. The first accompanies you on your trip: it shows the gate, delays and baggage belt and files the flight automatically in your history afterward. The best-known example is Flighty. The second kind are pure logbooks such as myFlightradar24, OpenFlights or FlightMemory. There you enter flights yourself, even years later, and get maps, distances and rankings by type, airline and airport in return.

Which variant is better depends on your everyday life. If you fly several times a month, you do not want to type anything in by hand. If you fly on vacation twice a year and want to add the last twenty years, you need a good entry form and an export. What belongs in a flight diary in the first place is explained in detail in the guide Logging your own flights as a passenger. This article is about the tools.

The apps and services in profile

Flighty: the travel companion with Passport

Flighty is first and foremost an app for flight tracking for passengers. According to its website, it reports status, delays and gate changes and watches the inbound aircraft up to 25 hours before departure. That way you find out early whether your aircraft is still stuck somewhere else. There are also alerts about ground stops or weather problems at the airport, plus details on the gate, baggage belt and booking code.

For the flight diary, the Flighty Passport is interesting: it collects the trips you have flown and turns them into an overview of your travel life. According to Flighty, the Passport is part of the free version, while the unlimited history is part of Flighty Pro. Importing trips from email, calendar and TripIt is also a Pro feature according to the pricing page. Pro costs US$4.99 per month or US$59.99 per year there, and other terms and a family plan are available as well (as of October 2026). According to the manufacturer, the app runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch; the website does not mention an Android version.

For spotters, that means Flighty is strong as long as you already use the app before the flight. For adding old trips and for detail fields such as the registration, a classic logbook is often the better complement.

myFlightradar24: the logbook from the flight tracking giant

Besides its live map, Flightradar24 runs its own logbook for passengers: myFlightradar24. The service used to be called Flightdiary, and the export link in the help pages still points to flightdiary.net. You enter your flights there with date, flight number, route, airline and aircraft and get a map of your routes along with statistics.

Handy for data fans: according to Flightradar24 support, you can download all your flights as a CSV file. The help pages also cover uploading flights via CSV. According to support, the airport database covers most commercial airports; if smaller fields are missing, you can report them via the contact form with name, coordinates and codes. How the subscriptions of the flight tracking site differ is explained in the article on Flightradar24 subscriptions, and Flight tracking apps compared shows alternatives.

OpenFlights: free, open and export-friendly

OpenFlights is a website where you display your flights on a world map, search and filter your history and have statistics calculated automatically. According to its own statement, the service is free, and the source code is on GitHub under the GNU Affero General Public License. The databases of airports, airlines and routes can also be downloaded freely.

Important if you are switching: OpenFlights can import data from FlightMemory and from CSV files in its own format and can also export your data again. The FAQ points out that Excel must be set to UTF-8 when opening the export so that special characters display correctly. Profiles can be shared via link or banner. Anyone who donates gets Elite status, which according to the FAQ includes an ad-free experience and password-protected private profiles, among other things. The statistics use great-circle distances, meaning the shortest route between the airports. The interface looks a bit old-fashioned and, according to the FAQ, is only partly usable on tablets, but in return your data is yours if it comes to that.

FlightMemory: the classic among online logbooks

FlightMemory is an online service for logging your own flights and, according to its website, a project by Robert Heret; the copyright notice goes back to 2007. The service explicitly targets aviation fans, crews, private pilots and occasional passengers. It records flight time, distance, aircraft types and airlines and turns them into a personal logbook and route maps. A community map bundles the entries of users from the last 24 hours.

A free account is available. The home page does not mention details on paid variants; it is best to check that directly in your account. Because OpenFlights offers a FlightMemory import, moving from there is comparatively easy. According to the OpenFlights FAQ, airline names may differ in the process, and unofficial airfields have to be created beforehand.

TripIt and other travel organizers

Travel organizers like TripIt are not flight diaries in the strict sense. They collect bookings when you forward confirmation emails and turn them into your itinerary. According to TripIt, travel statistics are also part of the offering, with more features in the Pro version. For spotters, this is mainly interesting as a data source: Flighty can import trips from TripIt, and the collected bookings help when adding old flights.

The comparison at a glance

Service	Type	Platform	Cost	Import and export	Strength
Flighty	Travel companion with Passport	iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch	Basic free, Pro by subscription	Import from email, calendar, TripIt (Pro)	Status alerts and automatic logging
myFlightradar24	Logbook	Web	free account	CSV export according to support	Link to Flightradar24, map, statistics
OpenFlights	Logbook, open source	Web	free, donations for Elite	Import from FlightMemory and CSV, export	Open data, statistics, private profiles for donors
FlightMemory	Logbook	Web	free account	Data can be transferred to OpenFlights	Long-running service, maps, flight time
TripIt	Travel organizer	App and web	Basic free, Pro by subscription	Forward confirmation emails	Collecting bookings, data source
Own spreadsheet	DIY	anywhere	free	any	Full control, comparison with spotting logbook

The information is based on the providers’ websites and help pages, as of October 2026. Features, prices and platforms change regularly. Always check the current overview before subscribing.

What matters in a flight diary

Ordinary passengers want a pretty map and a number for the kilometers they have collected. As a spotter, you have higher standards. Use these criteria to judge any app:

• Fields for type and registration: Can you enter the exact variant, such as the Airbus A320neo instead of just “A320,” and is there a separate field for the registration? Without the registration, the diary cannot be linked to your spotting logbook.
• Adding old flights: How fast is the entry when you want to record thirty flights from old booking confirmations? Web logbooks often have the edge here.
• Import from bookings: Email or calendar import saves work but requires granting access to sensitive data.
• Export: Do you get your data back as CSV? That is the most important insurance against discontinued services and price changes.
• Statistics: Rankings by type, airline, airport and route are standard. It gets interesting when you can filter by year, travel class or seat.
• Privacy: Is your profile public? Anyone who shares every flight live also reveals when the home is empty.

Which solution suits you?

The spreadsheet is not a step backward. Many experienced spotters use an app for convenience and regularly export to a spreadsheet as an archive. You can find a ready-made structure to rebuild in Spotting logbook in Excel or Google Sheets, and Notebook, spreadsheet or app answers the fundamental question of paper versus spreadsheet versus app.

How to combine app and archive

A proven workflow that combines convenience and data security:

When exporting, it is worth taking a quick look at spellings. Consistently use IATA codes like FRA or MUC for airports and uniform designations for types. Then flights from Frankfurt Airport or Munich Airport can be counted cleanly, and you quickly see whether you have already flown the Boeing 737-800 twenty times but never the Airbus A350-900.

From diary to statistics

A flight diary gets really interesting once enough entries have piled up. Typical analyses are the total distance, the number of different types and airlines, the most-flown route and the list of airports you have already seen from the inside. Spotters often go further and compare their type list with the collection from the fence: which types have I photographed but never flown myself? Travel ideas come out of exactly that, for example as in the article Flying rare aircraft types as a passenger.

Analyzing your own spotting statistics shows how to prepare numbers in a useful way. And if you are interested in which types you can still collect at all, Collecting all aircraft types helps.

A common misunderstanding: the kilometers in the diary have little to do with your miles account. Logbooks count geography, while frequent flyer programs follow their own rules by fare and travel class. More on this in Understanding frequent flyer programs and Miles & More explained.

Common mistakes with flight diary apps

• Logging without export. If you maintain your records in one app for years and never export, in the worst case you lose everything when the service is shut down.
• Entering types imprecisely. “Boeing 737” is not a type entry for spotters. Enter the variant as far as you can document it, and mark anything uncertain.
• Guessing registrations. If you can no longer find out the registration, write “unknown.” A wrong registration later distorts the link with your sightings.
• Sharing live. Post trips after you return instead. Show boarding passes only with the barcode, name and booking code blacked out.
• Allowing all permissions permanently. Check calendar and email access again after the import and revoke rights you do not need.

If you also want to keep your ground sightings systematically alongside the flight diary, Logbook apps for spotters compares the suitable tools. Plane spotting apps compared gives the big overview of apps around the hobby.

Conclusion

Flight diary apps take care of maps, distances and statistics for you, but they set different priorities. Flighty is a comfortable travel companion that collects your flights in the Passport along the way. myFlightradar24, OpenFlights and FlightMemory are classic logbooks, ideal for adding and analyzing flights, with export as a big plus. For spotters, one thing counts most in the end: that type and registration are recorded cleanly in the diary and the data belongs to you.