Flight tracking is a service that involves the tracking of flights,
aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...
and
airport
An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...
activity, often using
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
.
Overview
Flight tracking enables travellers as well as those picking up travellers after a flight to know whether a flight has landed or is on schedule, for example to determine whether it is time to go to the airport.
Aircraft carry
ADS-B transponders, which transmit information such as the aircraft ID, GPS position, and altitude as radio signals. These radio transmission are collected by civilian
ADS-B receivers located in the vicinity of the aircraft. These ADS-B receivers are only able to collect information on flights within radio-range of their position, so the data they collect is usually sent to a central server which aggregates feeds from numerous individual receivers throughout the world.
Flight tracking can be integrated with travel management and travel tracking services, allowing increased automation of travel software. This application of flight tracking is currently in its infancy, but is set to grow significantly as systems get more connected.
Despite the progress, many abrupt events like sudden weather changes are not captured by existing flight trackers because they take their information not from the airplane itself but from dispatcher centers which often do not know the actual status of plane's whereabouts.
[Bailey, Jeff]
''The New York Times'', November 15, 2007.
Flight tracking software is available for commercial operators to track their aircraft and monitor if they deviate from an agreed flight path. If they do, a warning alarm is generated to alert to a potential problem. The type of software available also imports and reviews global weather and
NOTAM
A Notice to Airmen/Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), is a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight. NOTAMs are unclassified notices or ...
information to monitor any emerging issues that could affect the flight.
List of flight tracking services
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ADS-B Exchange
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ADSBHub
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Aviation Edge
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FlightAware
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FlightRadar24
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OpenSky Network
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Plane Finder
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Planeradar
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Radarbox
AirNav Systems is a Tampa-based global flight tracking and data services company founded in 2001. The company operates a flight tracking website and mobile app called Radarbox which offers worldwide tracking of commercial and general aviation flig ...
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VariFlight
See also
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Radar tracker
A radar tracker is a component of a radar system, or an associated command and control (C2) system, that associates consecutive radar observations of the same target into tracks. It is particularly useful when the radar system is reporting data f ...
- the process by which air tracks are formed from radar detections
Notes
Civil aviation
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