Live flight radar: track any plane in real time

Live flight radar

What you are looking at is live air traffic, not an animation. Nearly every airliner, and a growing share of smaller aircraft, continuously broadcasts its position, altitude, speed and heading over a signal called ADS-B. Receivers on the ground pick up those broadcasts and pass them to the map. We receive part of that traffic ourselves: our own ADS-B receiver station feeds this radar directly, alongside a worldwide network of community receivers, so the picture is built from first-hand reception rather than a licensed copy of someone else’s map. At any moment there are well over ten thousand aircraft in the air worldwide: airliners on the trunk routes, cargo jets overnight, business aviation, helicopters, and light aircraft out on a sunny day. The map draws the traffic in whatever part of the world you are looking at, from a single airfield to a whole continent.

Plane tracker map

The plane tracker works in two directions. You can browse: drag and zoom the flight tracker map to any airport, city or stretch of coastline and watch the traffic there, from the holding patterns over New York to the departure streams out of London and Frankfurt. Or you can use it as a live flight tracker for one specific aircraft: click the search field on the radar and enter a flight number such as DL 2412, or an aircraft registration, and the map centers on that plane and follows it. The panel shows the route with a progress bar and expected arrival time, the aircraft type and registration, altitude, speed and heading, plus tabs with an altitude and speed graph and the aircraft’s previous flights.

Coverage is worldwide, with one honest footnote. Over land, receivers are so dense that flights are tracked without interruption. Over the open ocean there are far fewer receivers, so between two position reports the radar projects the flight forward along the track it was already flying. A projected position is never dressed up as a measured one: the aircraft is drawn translucent and the panel notes that the position is estimated, and the moment it comes back into receiver range the projected track snaps back to the live one.

What do the symbols on the flight radar mean?

Yellow symbols are aircraft. Airliners, small planes and helicopters each have their own shape, and airport ground vehicles appear as a small square. The symbols scale with the zoom level. Aircraft that transmit no ADS-B are not on the map: some military and government flights, and small aircraft without a transponder. Military aircraft that do transmit are shown and marked as military.

Track a flight by airline

If you mostly follow one carrier, the dedicated airline trackers are the faster route. Each one shows this same live radar filtered to a single airline and explains that airline’s flight numbers, fleet and network. There is a JetBlue flight tracker for every B6 flight, a Southwest flight tracker for the largest domestic operation in the United States, and trackers for the three big network carriers: United, American and Delta. For Europe’s largest airline group there is the Lufthansa flight tracker, with a German edition, Lufthansa Flugstatus, for readers who prefer to follow Lufthansa in that language. The full list of airline and airport pages is above the map.

Frequently asked questions

Is this flight radar free?
Yes. The live map, the search, and the flight details are free for everyone, with no account, no trial period, and no payment step. Open the page and the radar starts.

Why is a plane not on the map?
Usually because it has not departed yet: an aircraft appears once its transponder is on, around pushback, so search again close to departure time. Other reasons are aircraft that carry no ADS-B transponder, mostly older light aircraft, and short gaps in receiver coverage in remote areas, which the radar bridges with an estimated position.

How live is the data?
Aircraft broadcast their position several times per second, and the map pulls in a fresh set of positions a few times per minute; the aircraft glide smoothly in between. A plane you see is therefore normally no more than about 15 to 20 seconds behind reality. The expected arrival time updates during the flight, which makes it more current than the time printed on a booking confirmation.

Can I see military aircraft?
Some of them. Transport aircraft, tankers and trainers often fly with their transponders on and appear with a military callsign, marked as military on the map. Fighters and sensitive missions usually do not broadcast, or transmit without identification, so they show up as an unlabeled mark or not at all.