Tracking Sites

There are a number of tracking sites, from the ubiquitous Flight Radar 24 all the way to the somewhat concerning JetSpy. For the average person with an interest in aviation, the sites like Flight Radar 24 are generally good enough.

Other sites have advantages, like they don’t take the FAA SWIM feed – so can display all the data that the aircraft transmits. This bypasses the restrictions placed on sites like Flight Radar 24. A typical example would be an aircraft not showing the departure and arrival airport, or some other information. In the screenshot below, you can see that there is little information available, this aircraft is subscribed to the LADD programme so the data displayed on FR24 is restricted.

To view these images at full resolution (they are simple screen shots), right click on the image and select open in a new tab.

If we now look at the same aircraft on ADSB, we can see that there is more information. Which is why when I’m looking at these web sites I will normally use the following site “globe.adsbexchange.com”, none of the tracking sites are perfect – there are sometimes reasons for using more than one at a time.

The above two sites are the basic sites that will suit most peoples needs, another site that I use that is a little more difficult to navigate and has slightly more restricted graphical interface is “opensky-network.org” which unlike the other sites does require you to create an account for access. When all three sites are used in conjunction, it is generally possible to find all the information that I require.

All of these sites will be affected by the PIA programme, as the actual aircraft will broadcast a fake identity – they will display only the data based on tracking the temporary ICAO Hex code. But for aircraft other than these they deliver sufficient information to identify the aircraft and its routing.

In my next post I will cover the sites that concentrate on tracking the private arcraft of the wealthy.

Tracking the Aircraft not the Person.

I’m pretty sure that most of us would feel uncomfortable if we were tracked, it is something that few of us think about – but potentially everytime we pay for something, drive past an ANPR camera or walk through pretty much any town center we are tracked. Online we are tracked, what sites we visit, where we were when we accessed the site, what time it was and we all agree to having tracking cookies and terms and conditions that mean that the data can be shared or sold. Sometimes by companies owned by the very people who are shouting loudly that they shouldn’t be tracked when flying in their private aircraft.

Many of the wealthy that have supported hiding the identity of their private aircraft are the same people who need the general public to follow them, which seems to be a bit ironic really. They have cited various concerns (mainly security) to sway the argument in their favour and they have effectively achieved their goal in the United States at least.

People like Jack Sweeny who seemed to have a fascination with people like Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg along with others and the Fleet of Government Jets used to ferry people like the President, Vice President and Secretary of State around contributed to the pressure for individual anonymity in no small measure. And the publicity that they garnered may well have been an infulencing factor in the decision making process, which is a bit of a pain for plane spotters.

In general, unless you see a person boarding a plane – there is actually no way of telling unless a characteristic like the aircraft call sign changes. Many people know that when the President is aboard any United States Air Force flight, the callsign used by that aircraft is “Air Force One” and Air Force Two” for the VP but you wouldn’t know otherwise.

Elon Musk has a personal fleet of five jets, again you are not certain he’s actually on any of them unless you saw him board. And to be honest who is going to stand at some perimeter fence for that, probably not most plane spotters. Most of us just want to say that one is new or it is old, I can never recall in conversation any of my spotting friends and aquaintances saying that they went to see an aeroplane because someone was on it unless it was family leaving or arriving.

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