The other day at work, one of my flights was heading toward Salt Lake City, which was fogged in. Due to a combination of runway issues and poor visibility, I wasn’t sure whether my flight would get to land at Salt Lake. I became curious about which runway the airport was using for arrivals. My friend Josh suggested an iPhone app called LiveATC.

As you might expect, LiveATC allows you to listen to live air traffic control frequencies for hundreds of airports throughout the country. In other words, you can use your iPhone to listen to the controllers and pilots talking to each other. This might sound about as exciting as watching snow melt, but in certain situations it can be quite useful. I learned which SLC runway was active and what the current visibility readings were, which helped me gauge whether my flight would get in (it did). The ingenuity of mankind continues to amaze me.