Airline Flight Tracking

[markinillinois]

Since 1974, I've listened primarily to ARTCC high altitude sectors above 24,000 feet. Living in the middle of the U.S. directly between the three busiest airports on earth (Atlanta, Chicago & Dallas), there's lots of stuff flying overhead to hear on a daily basis.

My favorite aspect of aircraft listening has always been wanting to know where airline flights were coming from, going to and the aircraft type. Prior to the internet age, I invested in OAG flight schedule books for that purpose. Despite their high subscription price, they served my needs quite well. I still use their Pocket Flight Guide and it's handy when airplane watching somewhere.

These days, there are several sites on the internet which are devoted to airline flight tracking and my two favorites are at the bottom of this page.

The first site just lists the major airlines, but the major airlines are what we primarily hear anyway. The site states the departure city, arrival city, aircraft type plus a map will appear which shows the flight routing.

The second site lists every airline in existence, including the freight carriers. This site does everything the first site does with the exception of showing the flight routing.

I appreciate both of these two sites very much for helping me to enjoy my radio hobby. I take the time to send them an e-mail occasionally just to thank them for what they do.

http://flightview.com
http://flightarrivals.com

Mark Holmes
Marion, IL
markinillinois@webtv.net

 

[DaveNF2G]

The so-called "live" flight tracking sites operate on a 10-minute (or more) delay due to homeland security paranoia. If you're listening to a scanner, seeing where the planes were 10-15 minutes ago is useless.

To solve this problem, I've been looking for software that would allow me to stream my scanner audio through my own computer on a 10-minute delay loop. If anyone knows of such a program, please let me know!

 

[mdulrich]

You might want to check out this site that I just found about a week ago.

http://www.fboweb.com/21/track/trackcommercialmenu.asp

Mike

 

[K2KOH]

Some airliners transmit position reports over ACARS...United, US Air, Delta transmit position reports, as well as speed and flight levels. I use two AirNav programs, ACARS decoder and AirNav Suite. AirNav suite will link up with the decoder and read the longitude/latitude reports, putting the aircraft on a map. If the reports are given in waypoints, you can input those in AirNav suite and track the aircraft as well.
Check out the site

www.airnavsystems.com

 

[Spleen]

And definitely try ACARSD...

http://www.acarsd.org

 

[CORN]

I use Flight Explorer Personal Edition. It is very accurate and it has a lot of features including where all TFR's are in operation. The new 5.0 version has 5 different icons for various aircraft types. In order for the complete flight to be listed the a/c in question has to have an IFR flight plan filed. VFR aircraft show up but only tail number, speed, and altitude are displayed. NASA aircraft also show up as well. The icons are delayed in being displayed but if you pull up the flight list it is not.

 

[Spleen]

Ouch! A buck an hour, and that rate only guaranteed a whole ten hours per month....I don't even wanna know what the rate is after that...

But thanks for the input...that's a new one around these parts...obviously you gotta be hardcore and only interested in traffic in the US, UK, or NZ to get a lot out of it, but it might be worth a look anyway just for the other features that aren't included in packages like Airnav, ACARSD, etc.

 

[Colin9690]

I agree with CORN. Flight Explorer is exelent for tracking flights. It's been a while since I've used it, but you can try it for free at flightexplorer.com

 

[gbeck41]

Commercial Airlines

I live in NE Arkansas with 3 major Airports around, Adams Field, Little Rock, Memphis International and St. Louis. FCC data base shows this company called Aeronautical Radio Inc which has tons of freqs for Airports and some Airlines. Where can I find more freqs on Commercial Airlines and how about Military Aircraft? Gregory :roll:

 

[Spleen]

This is a good place to start:

http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&stid=5

Check out the links at the bottom to get the ARTCC frequencies, then go to http://www.airnav.com and punch in a particular airport code to get the field-specific frequencies. This will get you started for commercial aircraft.

http://www.milaircomms.com/ is a good place to go for MilAir info of all types, frequencies, radios, antennas, etc. Just read between the lines.... ;-)

 

[ericcarlson]

Re: Commercial Airlines

FCC data base shows this company called Aeronautical Radio Inc which has tons of freqs for Airports and some Airlines.

Aeronautical Radio Inc. (ARINC) acts as a spectrum manager for aeronautical company frequencies (128.825-132.0 and 136.5-136.975). ARINC licenses all the frequencies with the FCC and assigns them to other users, so unfortunately the FCC data only provides part of the story but it's a start. The primary users of these frequencies are airlines but they are also used by Fixed Base Operators (FBOs), corporate aviation bases and some medevac services. ARINC also operates a network used mostly by smaller airlines to relay messages to their dispatchers or to establish phone patches.

Here is the US VHF aviation band plan:
http://www.radioreference.com/apps/wiki/index.php?title=Aircraft
The ARINC En Route Service is also listed at the bottom of the page.

-Eric