Everything on the map, in five minutes
PlaneTrack shows every aircraft our receiver network can hear, live, with its route, schedule and history. This page walks through the map, the buttons, the shortcuts and what the colours and codes mean. Nothing here needs an account; a free one adds alerts and a watchlist.
Reading the map
Each icon is one aircraft, drawn to its family: heavies are big, narrowbodies medium, business jets and props small, helicopters and balloons have their own shapes. The map opens coloured by type; the legend in the bottom-left corner switches that to altitude or speed.
Name tags
Zoom in past a region and every plane shows its callsign with flight level and groundspeed underneath (GND while taxiing). Tags step aside for each other; emergencies, your watchlist and military aircraft keep theirs first.
Faded and ringed planes
A faded icon over an ocean is our live estimate between reports. A ring means something: red for an emergency, amber for a diversion, cyan for a position from multilateration, gold for a plane you follow.
Airports
Pins mark airports. Major fields appear first, then the general-aviation fields with an airline code, then every strip as you zoom in. Click one for its arrivals and departures.
The strip
The instrument strip under the header keeps live counts: aircraft on the map, the WATCH list, the fastest, highest and longest flights right now, Notable, and the most-tracked aircraft. Click any of them.
The buttons in the bottom-right corner
Cycle dark, satellite and light basemaps.
Show or hide the callsign tags when zoomed in.
Where aircraft have been over the last six hours.
Winds aloft, so you can see why eastbound flights are quicker today.
Watch a callsign, registration or hex code and get told when it appears.
Click any aircraft
The flight panel opens with the photo, aircraft type and registration, the route with origin and destination, progress along it, scheduled and estimated times where we have them (US airspace), the live track drawn on the map with an altitude-coloured trail, and the aircraft's history: every leg we have recorded for that airframe.
- Alert sets a notification for the next time this aircraft flies.
- Share copies a link that opens the map on this flight.
- Cockpit puts you inside it (next section).
- The star adds it to your Hangar, your personal watchlist.
Ride inside any flight
Open a flight and press Cockpit, or hit C. The map becomes a first-person view from the aircraft: satellite imagery and real elevation below, the horizon ahead, a heading tape at the top, altitude, groundspeed and vertical speed at the bottom. The traffic strip lists every aircraft within 60 nautical miles with distance, clock position and relative altitude; click one to jump into its cockpit. It works on the ground too. Esc or Exit cockpit brings the map back.
Finding things
Search (the box at the top, or /) takes a flight number in either form (UA2240 or UAL2240), a registration, a hex code, an airport name or code, or an airline. Picking an airline filters the map to that fleet; picking an airport opens its board.
WATCH in the strip is the live list of things worth a look: emergencies, diversions, go-arounds and holds, rare types and special airframes, with a tab for airports having a bad day.
Alerts (the bell) watch a callsign prefix, registration or hex and notify you in the browser when it shows up. Signed in, alerts also reach you by email and, with the iOS app, as push notifications.
Replay any moment
Time travel (the pill at the bottom of the map) scrubs the whole sky back to any moment and plays it forward at up to 480x. Everyone can go back 30 days; Premium goes back 400 days. Stories in Notable open as one-tap replays of the event they describe.
Notable (in the strip, next to Longest) is the most recent notable flights: emergencies, diversions and rare aircraft as the network sees them, plus photos from spotters and one-tap replays, with chips to filter by kind.
What a red aircraft is telling you
Every transponder broadcasts a four-digit squawk code. Three are reserved worldwide as emergencies; PlaneTrack flags them the moment they change, with a banner at the top of the map and a red ring on the aircraft.
Anything from a medical case on board to an engine problem. The most common of the three, usually followed by a diversion or a return.
The aircraft cannot talk to air traffic control. Rarely dangerous; it continues on its cleared route while controllers make room.
Hijack. Extremely rare and usually a mis-set code; treated seriously until the crew confirms otherwise.
The full explainer, with how often each code really appears, is on the Squawk Emergencies page.
Faster with the keyboard
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| / | Focus search |
| C | Cockpit view of the selected aircraft (again, or Esc, to exit) |
| U | Military and special aircraft only (again to clear) |
| ? | Shortcut card |
| Esc | Exit cockpit, then close panels and filters, then leave playback |
PlaneTrack for iOS and Sky Pointer
The iOS app has the live map, your alerts as push notifications, schedules and diversions in every flight, and the Watch feed. Sky Pointer uses the phone's camera and compass: point it at the sky and it names the aircraft you are looking at; snap it and your Sky Shot goes into Notable. Sky Pointer also runs in the browser.
Ready when you are
The map is live right now. Premium adds 400 days of playback, unlimited alerts and the API; feeders get it free.
Open the live map See Premium