Flightradar24.com shows live airplane traffic from different parts around the world. The technique to receive flight information from aircraft is called ADS-B. That means the Flightradar24.com can only show information about aircraft equipped with ADS-B transponders. Today about 60% of the passenger aircraft and only a small amount of military and private aircraft have an ADS-B transponder. Flightradar24.com has a network of about 100 ADS-B receivers around the world that receives the information from aircraft with ADS-B and sends this information to a server, and then displays this information on a map on Flightradar24.com. Only aircraft within the coverage area of the 100 receivers are visible.
Common aircraft models that are visible on the map (have ADS-B):
Common aircraft models that are NOT visible on the map (no ADS-B):
Of course there are exceptions. For example one Lufthansa CRJ900, one LOT ATR-72, one Wideroe Dash, some MD8X from Onur Air, some Saab 340 in Australia, and some private Cessnas are visible.
Flightradar24.com was launched in Sweden in 2007. In the beginning we started to build our own network of receivers in Northern and Central Europe. In 2009 we opened this network, and made it possible for anyone with a ADS-B receiver to connect to the network. This made it possible to expand in the rest of Europe, on Greenland, in Austraila, in Canada and in Brazil. In 2010 we hope to cover most parts of Europe and other places around the world. Hopefully with your support. We greatly appreciate any contributions of "radar data", in any country, on any continent.
Please do!!! We are specially looking for contributors in places without coverage like France, Spain, Germany, southern Italy and Greece!
If you have an ADS-B receiver, or get one, and you want to share information received by your receiver with Flightradar24.com you can contact info@flight24.com with information about your location (town or airport and country). In a couple of days we will send you some scripts that are easily installed on your computer. Once installed the scripts will send flight information from your area to our server and the map on Flightradar24.com. The bandwidth used by the scripts is very small, about 500 MB per month (15 MB per day). Several of Flightradar24.com receivers are using GPRS/3G/mobile broadband to send information to the map.
There is no defined time that you have to be online with your receiver. However, as soon as you connect your radar to the network, and coverage is increased, there are users how will start following air traffic in your area. This users would of course appreciate if the receiver is online as much as possible. And so would we.
The two most popular ADS-B receivers on the market are SBS-1 from Kinnetic Aviation and AirNav from Airnav Systems. The cost to buy a receiver is about 500 Euro. To get better coverage we recommend to buy an external antenna and place it as high as possible with 360 degrees clear site in all directions. The price for an antenna is about 100 Euros. Try to use as short antenna cable as possible or use a low-loss-cable to make the signal loss as small as possible. It's also possible to use an signal amplifier to make the signal stronger and increase coverage. The receiver needs to be connected to a computer to make it possible to see the air traffic.
The coverage depends on many different things. The most important is that the antenna is placed with 360 degrees visibility, as high as possible above surrounding terrain. Normally the coverage is about 250-350 km in all directions, but it's possible to have up to about 450 km of coverage in good conditions with a signal amplifier.
In most cases the reason is that the coverage from the surrounding receivers has been lost. It can also be a technical problem somewhere.
Our receivers can receive signals from ModeS-transponders, but there is no position information from ModeS, so we cannot plot this aircraft on the map. Your have to upgrade the transponder in the airplane to ADS-B / VDL 4 to be visible on Flightradar24.com.
Actually we don't know, this make take several years.
Flightradar24.com is a network of receivers around the world. Some receivers are online 24/7 and others are only online from time to time. There are many reasons why a receiver is offline. There can be a technical problems with the receiver, with the antenna or the computer. It can also be a problem with the Internet connection to the receiver. Or the owner of the receiver has closed down his receiver and moved to another location. With over 100 receivers connected to the network, Flightradar24.com cannot tell why different receivers are offline, and when they will be back online. If you want to be sure to have coverage in your area, buy one receiver and connect it to Flightradar24.com :)
Major airports in areas where Flightradar24.com normally have coverage. The airport marks can be removed in "settings".
No donations or support in that form is currently accepted. But if you like the site, and are planning to go on an holiday. Or just take a flight somewhere. Please feel free to try out our other project over at flight24.com to search and compare flight prices. Incomes derived via that project indirectly benefits flightradar24.com.
Yes, the technology used to receive airplane positions is called ADS-B, where B stands for Broadcast. The signals do not have a specific recipient and can therefore be monitored and used by anyone.
Not directly, but you can find info about flights from the last 7 days at data.flight24.com
Yes!
Yes and No :) You are allowed to show screenshots on your homepage, but you are not allowed to show the livemap on your homepage (in an iframe) without asking for permission. But if you contact us first (info@flight24.com) and tell us about your homepage, we can give you access and the correct instructions on how to do it. We make use of javascript to brake out of frames currently to prohibit some unwanted iframe includes on other sites. We cannot offer the iframe right now due too very high load on our servers
Screenshots taken from Flightradar24.com may be used for free by media, if information is shown that map is "Courtesy of Flightradar24.com". Web pages publicating screenshots should have a link till Flightradar24.com
History before shutdown (no callsigns)
History before shutdown (with callsigns)
2010-04-17 11:00 CET - Ural Airlines A321 flying below ash, from Moscow to Rimini. Landed in Vienna.
2010-04-17 20:00 CET - KLM testflight
2010-04-20 22:50 CET - First ladning on Heathrow
You can contact Flightradar24.com on info@flight24.com
Please read Q&A before sending us questions about the radar.
You can also ask questions and read more about the radar on our forum or on twitter.
© 2007-2010 Flightradar24.com
