Flightradar24 Flight Tracker Unlimited
Alexina Jurs
With Flightradar24 and FlightAware, you can find out granular details including how fast and high a flight is, its route, the exact airplane operating it and when it was built, and what routes it flew before, even months in the past.
Flightradar24 calls itself the most popular flight-tracker app; the Google Play store shows it has more than 10 million installs, while FlightAware has more than five million. Flightradar24 is the more customizable of the two, and while FlightAware says it tracks more flights, it lacks options like showing planes on the ground. (There's also a third flight-tracking app and website, Planefinder, which looks and feels similar to Flightradar24 and has the same price for the premium version.)
The free version is pretty intuitive; it defaults to your location, which you can return to at any time by touching the arrow at bottom left, and shows you every plane in the vicinity with either airline code and flight number (for commercial flights, like Delta 996 or Southwest 1731 below) or registration (for some private aircraft, like N41645.)
You can use Flightradar24 in augmented-reality mode, too. Tap the "AR" letters in the top left corner and the app will let you look around you, telling you which planes, if any, are found in the airspace surrounding you. Point your phone at a plane in the sky, and you'll get a text label with flight number and destination.
Flightradar24 has two upgrade options, Silver and Gold, for $9.99 and $34.99 a year respectively. While we use the Gold version at TPG since we need its deep archive of past flights, it may be overkill if you are not a hardcore aviation geek or an aviation-industry professional. The Silver option is all the upgrade most enthusiasts will need for practical purposes.
Not everything can be tracked, though, or at least not fully. Many private planes, for example, will display as "Blocked," with no data beyond the ability to track their route. That's because their owners have requested anonymity. Military planes mostly do not appear on flight-tracking sites because of operational secrecy, even when they are on innocuous missions. That's where another flight-tracking site comes in, at least for the military planes: ADS-B Exchange. (There's no app, but it works fine on the mobile web.)
Flightradar24 is a Swedish internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight tracking information on a map. It includes flight tracking information, origins and destinations, flight numbers, aircraft types, positions, altitudes, headings and speeds. It can also show time-lapse replays of previous tracks and historical flight data by airline, aircraft, aircraft type, area, or airport.[2] It aggregates data from multiple sources, but, outside of the United States, mostly from crowdsourced information gathered by volunteers with ADS-B receivers and from satellite-based ADS-B receivers.[3]
It is the largest ADS-B network in the world with over 40,000 connected receivers. Over 200,000 flights tracked per day, with over 4 million users per day. It is also used by most major airlines and others in the aviation industry, including Airbus, Boeing, and Embraer.[5]
In August 2022, the plane carrying Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, SPAR19, became the most tracked flight to date, tracked by over 708,000 people as it landed in Taipei, with over 2,900,000 following at least a portion of the flight.[17]
In September 2022, the plane carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II was attempted to be tracked by 6,000,000 users in the first minute after the transponder activated, with 4,790,000 following a portion of the flight, becoming the most tracked flight of all time. The website processed 76,200,000 requests related to the flight over its course.[18][19] Initially, the site crashed due to the sheer number of users.[20]
The site blocks some ADS-B information from display for "security and privacy" purposes.[22] For instance, the position of the Japanese Air Force One aircraft used by the Japanese emperor and prime minister was visible on the site until August 2014, when the Japanese Ministry of Defense requested that the information be blocked.[23] This has subsequently meant that the aircraft no longer has its flight track posted online or on the site.
Flightradar24 is the Android version of this popular flight-tracking service. With this tool, you'll be able to look up and follow live the movement of commercial aircraft from departure to landing. All through a very easy-to-use and comprehensive system that lets you view aircraft on a map and check all the information available for each one.
The main screen in Flightradar24 shows a global map with the geolocation of all airplanes currently in flight. If you want to open any of them, just click on the airplane icon and the specific information for that flight will be displayed. If you want to track a specific route, you can search not only its exact location but also the aircraft model, its departure time, the time it is expected to land or if there are any delays.
In addition to all of the above, Flightradar24 lets you filter flights by altitude, airline or flight speed, so you can have fun discovering any flight based on its characteristics. All these filters can be combined with each other, and the resulting flights will be displayed on the map so that you can follow them as a group.
Finally, in addition to viewing all available flight information and tracking in real-time, Flightradar24 has a large number of extra features that let you check historical data, replay previous flights or enjoy a 3D pilot's panoramic view.
Download Flightradar24 and track live all commercial flights taking off around the globe. Track routes in real time and discover the most important and interesting things about the history of aviation.
- Gold: All features included in Silver, 365 days of flight history, detailed live map weather layers for clouds and precipitation, aeronautical charts and oceanic tracks, air traffic control boundaries, extended Mode S data. Price varies by country and currency.
We live in the crossings of Mt.View. Recently we noticed a lot of plane noise during the day and night. Is this the result of the vote? Is the new flight path already started? Where can we complain if we dislike it? Thank you.
@Connie,
The increased airplane noise you've heard lately is not the result of last week's vote. It's mostly due to the rainy weather we've had in the Bay Area, which results in an altered flight path, that has planes bound for San Jose coming in from the north side of the airport instead of from the south side like they do when the weather is good.
If you ever want to see which plane just flew over your house, you can use the Flight Radar 24 website to do that:
And if you find that a noisy plane was bound for San Jose Airport, you can report your complaint to SJC here: Web Link
Greg
I went to the meetings and sent letters and emails protesting the change that brought such sudden and deafening noise to Mountain View. It seems a large number of us did this - and it brought results. I thought the panel - and the FAA people attending as well - were very aware of the problems and willing to help. It seems they responded to the public in a very positive manner, and I'm grateful.
Maybe this is a good lesson for more people to get involved and actually write letters and emails to your City Council and attend meeting and speak up. Personal involvement, en masse, works a great deal of the time, as evidenced here.
This was not an intent to "dump" noise on someone else. The noise had been over an area much north of here for decades. People bought houses and lived according to the noise they could tolerate. With the sudden switch of routing, there was a massive increase of commercial traffic over Mountain View, resulting in the noise where we specifically bought to avoid.
Many of us pointed out that it was similar to realizing your home was near a railroad track, but you decided to buy there anyway - and also the opposite: you chose to perhaps pay more and buy in a quieter area away from the tracks. Then suddenly, the railroad decides to switch the tracks to the quieter neighborhood. You have the rules changed on you, through no fault of your own. That's the scenario we see in the flight track being moved after so many years.
I am glad that, in moving the flight track back near the original route, they are also taking steps to quiet the noise. Thus those who bought, knowing the consequences of the flight track, will get some relief as well.
Joe Simitian handled this very well. I'm grateful for the future reduction of noise here in Mountain View - and a return to our quieter skies that we had for decades - before this last awful revision.