6. Live information is not guaranteed
Locations, photos, routes, weather and maps come from other companies. You accept that when you buy.
This section is a condition of buying a FlightAbove Device and of subscribing to FlightAbove Cloud. It applies to the Device screen, Cloud, the website, the dashboard, FlightLogs, and any alert or public page that shows the same information. Read it before you pay. If you do not accept it, do not place an order and do not subscribe.
Condition of purchase
The hardware is ours. The live information is not.
You are buying a display, or a subscription that runs on a screen you already own. You are not buying a guaranteed feed. Live aircraft locations, aircraft photos, routes, weather and maps are supplied by upstream providers. We do not own those providers, we do not operate their networks, and we do not control whether they answer, how fast they answer, or whether what they send is complete or correct. A gap, a delay, a blank field, a wrong photo, a wrong route, a missing forecast, or a map that does not load is part of the product you are agreeing to buy.
Placing an order, paying for an order, starting a Cloud subscription, or continuing to use a Device or Cloud after this section is published is your acceptance of every paragraph below. Acceptance is part of the purchase. It is not optional, and it is not something you can set aside later because a particular flight, photo, route, weather reading, or map was missing on a particular day.
6.1 What we show
Five kinds of information, none of them guaranteed
FlightAbove requests information and lays it out on a screen. The request can fail. The answer can be late, partial, stale, or wrong. Any of the following can be missing at the same time, and any of them can be missing while the Device itself is working normally:
- Live aircraft locations, including position, altitude, speed, heading, callsign, and whether an aircraft appears at all.
- Aircraft photos, including a photo of that exact airframe.
- Routes, including origin, destination, flight number, and airline.
- Weather, including the current conditions and any forecast.
- Maps, including tiles, labels, boundaries, and place names.
6.2 Who supplies it
Upstream providers, not FlightAbove
Each of those categories is produced by one or more upstream providers. An upstream provider is a separate company or network: a flight-tracking feed, a photo library, a route or schedule source, a weather service, or a map service. We call their systems. We do not run them.
Coverage also depends on things outside both of us. An aircraft has to be transmitting. A receiver has to hear it. Geography, terrain, altitude, and equipment all change what is visible. Some flights are absent at the source, including many military, blocked, private, and unequipped aircraft. Weather stations and map coverage are uneven. None of that is a setting we can turn on for you.
6.3 Business APIs are still not a promise
A commercial arrangement does not make the data continuous or correct.
Where we can, we use commercial and business API arrangements with the providers that supply this information. Those arrangements let us request data on agreed technical terms. They do not transfer ownership of the data to us. They do not give us control of the provider. They do not create a service level that we pass on to you.
A business API, including a paid one, can still fail. The provider can have an outage. It can throttle, queue, or refuse requests. It can return an empty result, a partial result, a cached result, or a result that is simply wrong. It can change what a field means, remove a field, change a plan, raise a price, alter its terms, or end the arrangement. It can do any of that with little or no notice to us. When that happens, the Device and Cloud show less, show nothing for that field, or show a fallback. We cannot force a provider to stay online, stay accurate, or keep serving FlightAbove.
We may use more than one provider for the same kind of information, and we may cache a previous answer so the screen is not blank for every hiccup. A cache can be minutes old, or older. A fallback can be a different provider, a generic image, a nearby place, or an empty field. Using a backup is an effort to keep the display useful. It is not a warranty that any particular aircraft, photo, route, weather reading, or map will be present or correct at any moment.
Live locations
An aircraft overhead may not appear. A position, altitude, speed, heading, squawk, or callsign may be missing, delayed, duplicated, or wrong. A target can vanish and return. Seconds of lag are normal. Minutes, or longer, happen when a feed is down, rate-limited, or has no plot for that aircraft. We do not guarantee that every aircraft in your sky, or any particular aircraft, will be shown.
Photos
Many aircraft have no photograph in the libraries we can query. When a photo is returned it may be that airframe, a different airframe of the same type, an older livery, or a placeholder. Libraries remove images, change URLs, and limit how often we may ask. A missing photo, a slow photo, or a photo you believe is the wrong aircraft is an upstream result. It is expected.
Routes
Origin, destination, flight number, and airline are often incomplete. A route can be blank, partial, stale, or attached to the wrong flight. We do not operate the flight and we do not receive a guaranteed schedule from the airline or from air traffic control. "No route" on the display is a normal outcome, not a failed device.
Weather
Current conditions and forecasts come from a weather provider. They can be missing, delayed, or taken from a nearby point rather than your exact address. They can disagree with what you see out of the window. Icons and units are our presentation of their numbers. A weather panel that does not load, or that looks wrong, is not a hardware fault.
Maps
Map tiles, labels, and place names come from a map provider. Tiles can fail to load, look outdated, or stop being available if that provider changes access, quotas, or styles. A map that does not draw, draws slowly, or shows a sparse background is still a working screen. Place names used for "flying over" text are reverse-geocoded from the same class of upstream service and can be missing or approximate.
6.4 What the purchase includes
A display that shows data when providers supply it
The price of a Device is for the hardware and for our software running on it: the screen, the case, the clock faces, the layout, and the ability to request this information. The price of Cloud is for access to that software on a screen you own, for the billing period you pay for. Neither price buys continuous coverage of every aircraft, a photograph of every airframe, a route for every flight, weather for every minute, or a map that always loads.
Product pages describe what the display is built to show when upstream data is available. Those descriptions sit beside this section. They do not override it. A photograph on our website of a screen showing a particular aircraft, route, weather icon, or map is an example of the layout. It is not a promise that your unit will show that aircraft, that route, that weather, or that map, then or later.
6.5 Not a defect, and not a refund
Upstream gaps sit outside the warranty
Missing, late, incomplete, stale, or inaccurate live information is not a defect in materials or workmanship. It is not a breach of these Terms. It is not grounds for a refund, a replacement, a price reduction, a warranty repair, or a free period of Cloud, except where a law that cannot be excluded requires otherwise.
The 12-month limited warranty on the Warranty page covers the Device itself. It does not cover the sky, the photograph, the route, the forecast, or the map. The same limit applies if you ask for a return because the information was not what you hoped to see. Change-of-mind returns, where they exist, stay on the Returns page and still require you to meet those conditions. Disappointment with upstream data is not a fault in the goods.
6.6 Not for decisions
A consumer display
FlightAbove is not certified avionics and not an emergency or distress service. Do not use locations, photos, routes, weather, or maps from a Device, from Cloud, or from this website for navigation, separation, dispatch, flight planning, or any decision where missing or wrong information could cause harm or loss. If you need operational data, use a source approved for that purpose.
6.7 Providers can change
We may switch or lose a feed
We may add, drop, or replace an upstream provider without notice and without a refund. If a provider ends access, changes its API, or becomes unusable, the related feature may shrink, change, or stop. That outcome is one you accept by buying. We are not obliged to find a replacement, to keep a feature that no provider will supply, or to compensate you for the difference.
6.8 Your statutory rights
The device itself stays covered
Nothing in this section removes rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or equivalent consumer law, that cannot be excluded. Those rights concern the goods being of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose, and as described. The description includes this limit. A Device that cannot run our software because of a hardware fault is a different matter, and is handled under the warranty and those statutory rights.