Live air traffic of the world | Hacker News Reader

Live air traffic of the world

flightradar24.com

404 pointsvibrunazo76 comments

Pretty, though, just to nit-pick since I happen to be sitting on a plane, seems to be not quite live: http://cl.ly/image/002u2g152Y0T

Actually, that's pretty good! Can you estimate the lag time (for you)?

In the US at least, the FAA's official data feed (ASDI) is delayed by at least 5 minutes. The undelayed data is only given out on an as-needed basis (e.g. to airline operators) and can't be redistributed to the general public.

I stumbled into the about section, and in there they mention they're using a fleet of 500 volunteer ADS-B receivers networked to a central server, and they actually just pick up on planes with ADS-B transponders (more common in Europe than the US, it seems) - http://www.flightradar24.com/about - so it looks like they're not aggregating official/moderated data feeds or anything.

FlightRadar24 nevertheless follows the FAA 5-minute rule. In other countries, there is even a delay of 10 or 15 minutes.

In Switzerland, the federal aviation authorities tried to impose a delay as well. After a wave of protest pointing out the absurdity of such security through obscurity – you can see aircraft in the sky after all! -, a delay is no longer necessary and you can check in real time which aircraft is flying over your head at the moment (if equipped with ADS-B).

I'm not sure it follows the 5-minute rule for non-FAA data. I've watched, for example, an Emirates A380 go over my flat (near Heathrow) almost exactly as it's passing on the FlightRadar24 map.

They recently added FAA data to the US map (go to Settings on the left and tick "Show FAA traffic").

Near London, UK here. Almost exactly realtime for me.

Mind-blowing accuracy actually. Sky is clear out so I just looked out my window, saw two planes going in opposite directions.

Looked at the site, and there they were. Really cool!

You could hack a tablet app to find out which way the tablet is oriented, and using the flight data, annotate the image from the camera with the phone information.

Flightradar24's data comes from a network of volunteer-run ADS-B receivers, which explains why the coverage is so much better over the US and Europe where there are lots of volunteers with their own ADS-B receivers than the rest of the world where there are not. Note for instance how coverage in Africa really only picks up again in South Africa around the major cities.

ADS-B transponders are also not yet required on all aircraft outside of Europe so many planes don't have them and won't show up on this site.

Some airline pilots will only activate certain modes of their ADS-B transponders in flight after take-off, particular those used to broadcast velocity and position, so it's possible that's what happened in your case.

For all other cases the upload from the ADS-B receiver to the Flightradar24 site will be as real-time as is possible with standard internet infrastructure.

Learned something new today. Till this moment I didn't know about ADS-B. Quick link or people like me - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...

Lots of stuff is happening in other domains too..

So the data is collected by volunteers... Sadly, there seems to be no indication of the license, no API (yet), and no way to download dumps...

Also, to nit pick again. The data from India seems to be wrong. There seem to be only 3-4 commercial passenger jets in the sky. This is impossible because most major Indian hubs are always backed up on the landings and departures.

Again to nit-pick: it's not wrong, it's just not exhaustive :)

As a data point they are dead on for Melbourne, Australia. Judging by watching the map and hearing the plane go over.

Same in Brussels, Belgium. Amazing to see and hear the real plane and at the same time watch in on a map.

Very impressive indeed. One of the coolest features of the site is the Cockpit view - a very creative use of Google Maps and graphics to give you a Flight Simulator like view from inside the cockpit of any of the thousands of aircraft in the air.

I've been watching a plane 'land' via cockpit mode in my home town, a surreally genuine experience given how well I know the terrain and have flown in so many times. Each time the plane rolls to maneuver in, it's as if I'm back on the flight.

Oh, now Google Earth crashed as it was getting to the good part. I feel like I missed the ending of a movie.

Too bad that the Google Earth plugin doesn't seem work on Linux.

For a second I almost thought it was real as the plane was flying over an ocean. Very well done.

Wow. That looks beautiful.

Note that just because there aren't that many planes over Africa or other places doesn't mean there aren't planes there. From their site: "Today about 60% (about 30% in USA and about 70% in Europe) of the passenger aircraft and only a small amount of military and private aircraft have an ADS-B transponder."

Boats more your thing? http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

I've visited that site for a while, but I think this is a little more exciting...planes tend to move faster than boats :)

Also, of course, the cockpit view is amazing.

Thanks - I think I need to check the cockpit view. I was recently travelling by plane and from the high vantage point saw how many boats were around Singapore - it was an eye opener.

Very cool site. The flight sight is a bit nicer, it shows you pretty much all planes at the same time. With the boats map you have to preselect an area to load the view. Might be more boats though.

Anyway thanks for pointing this out. My insight today, was just how crowded the Strait of Hormuz is. I read about it and saw air pictures but now I _really_ understand what all the fuzz about Iran war consequences is about.

If you want nice and boats checkout http://www.fleetmon.com/live_tracking/info It signup only and the free plan is 5 minutes a day, but here you go captain.

There is also a similar site for marine traffic: http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

The technology behind the system is the same as in FlightRadar (on principle). The ships have AIS[1] transponders which transmit the position and velocity. This information is received through receivers run by army of volunteers and then submitted to the central site.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System

Anyone else surprised by the number of flights in the air at any given time? I never even imagined that there was this much activity even though I'm a frequent flyer.

I read somewhere that on average at any given time, 70-80% of all large commercial planes in service is in the air. Compare that to trains or trucks.

Well, yeah, but those aren't meant to fly... :-p

Seriously, though, that number is quite impressive. In order for that number to work across the population of airplanes, that means on average each aircraft individually needs to spend 70-80% of its time flying. Yikes! I've tried searching a bit for a source, but unfortunately can't find one. If you know where you got that from, I'd love to know.

I did some digging and my statement only seems to apply to long-haul flights, as mentioned in this thread [1]. "Well,most long-haul fleets fly a lot more than short-haul ones.BA 772s and VS 343s fly about 17 hours per day." That is 71%! Average utilization is between 42% and 48%. See [2], Figure 6.

[1] http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... [2] http://web.mit.edu/airlines/analysis/analysis_airline_indust...

My guess is that most long-haul aircraft are flying overnight (since you have to do to a trans-oceanic route) while most short-haul aircraft are parked overnight (there aren't that many short-haul red-eye flights).

This is very neat! I love it. Uh, I don't know if this is an error or if they're doing flight testing, but this is a very weird track: http://fr24.com/KAL32

Cockpit view is generating an error: "The Google Maps API key used on this web site was registered for a different web site. The developer of this web site can generate a new key here.

(here links to https://developers.google.com/maps/)

from the forum - "If you have problems with "Aircraft View" or API-key, make sure to install latest version of Google Earth plugin-in http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/plugin.html and remove your ad-blocker."

I logged in to google earth, paused ad blocker and cockpit view is now working for me.

I never truly appreciated how many planes are in the air until now..

and also 13000 satellites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbbd-4oEds

Enjoying it combined with ATC feeds from http://www.liveatc.net

Really cool, but the constant nagging popups telling me to download the app instead were unbelievably annoying.

A similar project with an academic background is 'AirTraffic LIVE':

http://radar.zhaw.ch/

It was created by students of a Swiss college of applied science in 2007. The test site is focus on Zurich International Airport but they have completed other projects based an their research. A spectacular example is a globe showing air traffic world wide created for a science museum:

http://radar.zhaw.ch/worldwide.html

There is also a Google Earth extension for private use:

http://www.idp.zhaw.ch/de/engineering/idp/forschung/transpor...

Love it! There's alot of activity! How many planes, how many people up in the air in an average moment? All this talk of a third runway / increased flight support in the UK, but really - how much oil is left - how sustainable is this industry?

Interesting...does JetBlue use two types of radar? I'm often seeing two icons for one flight: http://imgur.com/a/kENc0

The orange planes you see are from the FAA ASDI Data. That feed is delayed by 5 minutes. I would guess the site is meant to ignore the FAA data where ADS-B data is available, but in this case it looks like the call sign is incomplete in the ADS-B data.

That makes sense. Thanks!

Cool!:p I'm living next to an airport and it looks like it doesn't pickup everything (or some too late), but just a few minutes ago I heard a plane coming by & it was also on flightradar =')

Idea: people give their location & the app says when to expect noise from airplanes and when it will be away=)

nice ... are there any APIs for getting up-to-date flight traffic? Might be fun to play around with it.

The flight map over South Asia, China, and most of South America looks to be very incomplete.

Probably the time of day, I notice many more planes in Europe.

I wonder it live or delayed. Its 10.30 in India and past noon in China.

the same goes for Africa

For alt least some of their data, they rely on radio amateurs picking up transponder data and uploading it. They probably don't have a good network of stations in those regions.

Something to keep in mind regarding "completeness": only planes equipped with ADS-B transponders will generally be picked up by this (I say generally because I'm not sure if they are trying any multilateration techniques here on the Mode S). Prevalence of ADS-B is OK at best and very dependent on geographical area and type of aircraft (general aviation, commercial domestic, commercial international, etc).

Just remembered that I found Donald Trump on this a while back - he was flying in to my home city of Aberdeen:

http://blog.mclemon.cz/i-found-donald-trump-in-flight-radar-...

Isn't that just a trump branded plane? He runs a company that charters them out doesn't he? How did you deduce (perhaps you induced) that he was on this plane?

Good question. He has been back and forth to Aberdeen setting up some gaudy trump branded golf resort. A couple of days after I took the screenshot he appeared before the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. This is how I concluded he was in the plane, though I admit there is a minor chance that I am mistaken!

The site itself is fantastic though, I could spend ages just finding out what planes are going where and thinking about where I might visit next. Plus the coloured trails to indicate the altitude are a lovely touch.

edit: it was during this time (excellent clip, by the way) http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-26-2012/hairland...

Cockpit view is brilliant. Just watching a plane land back home right now :)

Why cockpit view is not working for me? It says: The Google Maps API key used on this website was registered for a different website. The developer of this website can generate a new key here.

Thanks for posting this is amazing.

The cockpit view is very cool. Reminds me: You can climb Mt everest also now on Google Earth.

South Col etc. At 8000m, somewhat crazy but similar views =D

I thought there would be a corridor of never ending planes between north America and Europe. According to the map, there are no transatlantic flights.

I think that's because there are no data for that region - the FAQ mentions that the data is crowdsourced from folks with certain receivers. Although, I can't imagine it'd be hard to simulate the paths based on data from both coasts.

The issue with the oceanic flights is that there are no receiving stations for the ADS-B messages, as these stations are ground based. Therefore, there is no way to receive the position reports to feed into the flight data network.

This is crazy cool. I love the cockpit view!

Looks like the Virgin Atlantic and British Airways 747's hit 600+ knots on the redeye across the pond.

This is beyond fantastic. Just wow!

Amazing, didn't realize at any given time, how many planes are in the air around the world.

Indeed. According to the August, 2012 print edition of Popular Science, there are 500,000 people being transported in air at any given moment.

Would be really awesome to see a write up about what powers all this on the back end.

That is absolutely incredible!

Absolutely amazing!

planefinder.net is similar.

I live in south-eastern Canada and I can confirm it's very accurate, big jets to and from Europe constantly rumble overhead.

Wow..Fantastic..Cockpit view really awesome.

Amazing how many will not find this amazing.

Wow, this is amazing.

bravo! Way to kill my productivity.

no plane around beijing?

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