Forgive the potentially contentious topic. I’ve been a FlightAware feeder since 2018 and am also a pilot and aircraft owner. While I first stood up my feeder as a hobby (like perhaps many of you); that novelty wore off and the Enterprise FlightAware account benefit has become the primary motivator for me to keep the feeder online and operational. This has included various upgrades over the years including hardware improvements for reliability and so on.
That brings me to the problem: The forced Email MFA verification upon -every- login to actually use FlightAware as a part of my “enterprise” account benefit has so drastically reduced the value of FlightAware to me that I’m now considering other options.
Support has confirmed that this isn’t optional / can’t remove it, and with my OTP password on the account as well, logging into FlightAware has become a pain in the ass (mostly due to having to wait, sometimes several minutes for the email code to show up).
I already have my Raspberry Pi “dual feeding” to ADSB Exchange, and this gives me the added benefit of being able to track my own aircraft as I have ASDB data set to private with the FAA. FlightAware wants to charges $600 / year for this privilege (to track MY OWN aircraft.. not cool). That said, I’m not a fan of the ADSBExchange interface or mobile client options.
Have any of you switched / added another flight tracking site to your ADSB feeder in order to gain access to a better “flight tracking” experience that doesn’t have this painful email MFA requirement?
What’s the issue with ADSB Exchange? You can set alerts there, e.g., your aircraft, which then sends you an email alert when the aircraft hits whatever specification you set up. You can an email then to view the track live. Just follow the link to see your track.
How do you setup alerts for a tail # in ADSBExchange? I can only see how to setup a generic alert by aircraft type. Even the, the history flight data / presentation for a specific aircraft (which I like to use) is terrible compared FlightAware.
OK. Maybe you can’t - I’ve not gone through the setup in a while and have only set up alerts for military near me.
Another idea: if you have a static IP, you can set up port forwarding to go to your RPi from wherever you are. I used to have that set up when my ISP was Spectrum, who provided a static IP. My current ISP does not, although I’m using a VPN that offers static IPs, but I haven’t tried setting it up with that yet.
Anyway, as long as you’re flying in range of your own feeder, you should be able to connect directly to it. That won’t work for you to follow your track, though, when you fly out of range.
Of course, you don’t need an alert. You can just use a link: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=yourICAO Save it as a shortcut. Then you can just use that shortcut. But again, it’s ADSB Exchange, and I’m not sure what’s not to like about that page. This link can be a list of ICAO codes. I use it to track local helicopters. I haven’t updated it in a while. It’s currently set up as a static page coded with helicopters that I’ve noticed near my location. Austin Helicopters
OK. I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but you’re answering questions I didn’t ask. I can remotely access my PiAware just fine.
The question is: Has anyone found a different flight tracking site (FlightTrader24, AirNav Radar etc) that, in exchange for running a feeder, provides a free / enterprise level account as good or better than FlightAware without the headache of the email MFA login process?
OK. I don’t run into the issue you describe, but maybe that’s because I always have a tab open to the page with my account summary, so I’m perpetually logged in. I do see it occasionally, but it’s probably just when my system reboots. That’s using my Macbook Pro using the Brave browser. Even when I move around to other WIFI networks, my connection seems to remain. Maybe something like that is an option for you. I’ve not seen a FA email account verification email since June. It’s entitled, “FlightAware Account Activation”. Is that what you’re seeing?
Only one I can think of is Flightradar24 but in my opinion FA provides better software for the feeding part. Flightrader24 doesn’t use MLAT from private feeders, only from their own equipment.
Being a private pilot myself I use FA for my own tracking and login via the google authentication platform. I use that for all of my accounts eliminating the need for the one time passwords via e-mail. There are a lot of options there instead of the e-mail option.
tomvdhorst, Unfortunately once Email MFA is enabled you cannot shut it off, and support won’t remove it. So even if you enable Google auth, you’ll have that AND Email MFA. It’s stupid.
Interesting. Maybe that’s why I don’t have to deal with MFA. I’ve probably been using google auth all this time. Yeah, that’s absurd that MFA stays if it’s not required for google auth. Maybe you need to somehow get in touch with a developer instead of support.
Maybe you can change it via this page?
https://login.flightaware.com/mfa/manage is the page you land on after updating MFA.
This page also allows you to delete your 2FA method entirely.
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