flightaware.com website review

About 1.2 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 4.2 s faster on a phone.

22 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (836 KiB).

A phone's processor spends 11.1 s on main-thread work while loading, 5.8 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Your mobile performance score is 10 (desktop: 17). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 1.4 s. During a long task the page ignores taps.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (pub.network, Google/Doubleclick Ads and Optanon and others), adding 1.4 MB and 554 ms of main-thread time.

2 images could be 469 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

About 55 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

6 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 300 ms.

pub.network costs a phone 152 ms of main-thread work and 424 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Optanon costs a phone 110 ms of main-thread work and 301 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Polyfills for old browsers add 64 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

Real visitors wait 743 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.91 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Your largest element takes 15.9 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “hero background”.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 4.2 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The page becomes fully interactive after 23.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The layout shifts by 1.029 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.1 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The first text or image appears after 2.1 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 3.4 s to 4.0 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.4 MB in 132 requests on a phone: scripts 2.6 MB (52), other files 961 KiB (56) and images 832 KiB (16). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

image is on the first screen but marked loading="lazy", so the browser waits before fetching it and the page looks finished later. Load it eagerly (and give it fetchpriority="high" if it is the main image).

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example image at 1,200 px wide, shown at 310 px. Resized copies would save about 84 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.26 g of CO₂e: 151.0 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Images must have alternative text: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

Scrollable region must have keyboard access: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The viewport tag blocks pinch-zoom, which low-vision visitors rely on.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Headings skip levels (h4 → h6, h3 → h6 and h3 → h6), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

No XML sitemap at https://www.flightaware.com/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

No favicon is declared in the HTML, so browser tabs and Google's mobile results may show a generic icon.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.

The homepage links to 70 pages on flightaware.com and 11 external pages.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

robots.txt blocks GPTBot, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers, which the crawlers above handle.

/commercial/reports has no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

/commercial/foresight and /commercial use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 47 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 401 ()”.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

Large scripts ship without source maps.

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

Neither X-Frame-Options nor a CSP frame-ancestors policy is set, so any site can embed yours in a frame.

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is missing, so browsers may guess file types.

2 links go through two or more redirects, for example https://www.flightaware.com/photos.

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

flightaware.com's DNS answers are not signed. DNSSEC stops attackers forging them to send visitors or email elsewhere; most registrars switch it on in a click, though most sites still run without it.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

Social proof on the homepage: 3 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

The homepage has only about 216 words of visible text; thin pages give Google and first-time buyers little to go on.

There is no form on the homepage, so every lead has to click through to another page first.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads and Heap (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (OneTrust) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 8 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 13 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.