As one of the original supporters and helpers to this site in its very early days and a charter member of over 18 years I’ve noticed today that all my perks have been removed and the tracking screens are filled with “upgrade your account to see this information” boxes over a lot of things, which previously all worked fine.
I’ve not found any news article announcing this change so could the company owner please confirm that the perks have been deleted and we all now have to subscribe and pay like brand new users? I personally feel this change leaves a rather bad taste.
Maybe it’s a cookie issue. I think I’ve seen something like this happen before temporarily. Anyway, if it’s a cookie issue, try clearing your cache, etc., and logging back in. If your access comes back, then it was likely an issue with your machine.
We did add a link encouraging (all) web site users to upgrade to premium accounts, but did not (intentionally) make any changes to Charter Member accounts.
What perks were removed? We can certainly correct that promptly.
Hi Dan. I thought you’d moved on to other pastures a long time ago! I didn’t know you were still here. Is Mark Duell still there too?
The main difference I’ve noticed is that there is a banner across the top of the tracking screen telling me to upgrade my account status to see tail numbers. For example the Canadair test flights would all automatically show their tail numbers under the callsign.
Yes, Mark and I are still here! I’ve told him hello for you.
The “Charter Member” was extended to the very early adopters of FlightAware (pre-11/2005) and is not a published account type. In addition to special recognition, it includes additional history, more flights per page, additional flight alerts, and some priority handling in some internal systems.
We added tail numbers for call sign flights in 2013 as a paid feature, so that wasn’t anything removed.
Underneath the callsign at the top centre it would always show the tail number (only on live flights, not historical). Today it is not listed and instead tells me I need to “upgrade” to see that info.
Looking into the issue, it does not appear that there was a change to the permissions regarding tail numbers showing for charter members. There is a way to get Enterprise access by hosting and feeding ADSB data to FlightAware that would enable the tails for call sign flights. You can check out PiAware.
