Does everyone know about Flight Tracker?
 

If you go to www.usatoday.com/ and click on "travel" at the bottome of the page you get to the travel page and can "watch flights". Right now I'm watching the cross-country flight of a friend. It took off and quickly climbed to 35,000 ft. but soon went back down to 25,000 and then up to 31,000. The map shows the stormy areas in green. Poor thing, she must be as green as those map areas by now. Hold the coffee! She flies a lot so she is used to it, I hope.

Yes, our parents track us every time we fly back overseas to the UK from Arkansas.

Just because the plane climbs and drops about 5,000 ft. during the flight it does not mean that it's a rough flight. In most cases the paxes will not know that they are at the different levels. Usually that is a part of a flight plan, and on some occasions the pilots will request the altitude change to avoid atmosphereic disturbances. The change itself is not noticeable in most cases.

I love Flight Tracker! It is so interesting. Also, if you go to Johnnyjet.com you can listen to Air Traffic Control at various airports.

We used this one Christmas when our son's flights were delayed by ice storms. His final call was that he was trying to get on a flight to NH. Once that plane finally got off the ground I headed for the airport, arriving just in time. If we had waited until he called from the airport, he would have had to sit around for over an hour.