Flightradar24 Blog

Expanding the Flightradar24 Database and How You Can Help

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Our team works hard each day to add new aircraft, airlines, and airports to our ever-growing database. We’ve just released a new tool that also allows our users to contribute data for aircraft that may not already be in our database.

Growing the Flightradar24 Database

The Flightradar24 database contains hundreds of thousands of aircraft and thousands of airports and we’re adding more each day. In the past month, we’ve added over 12,000 aircraft to our database, from small Cessna 172s to new A380s. We’ve also added 25 new airlines this month and 30 new airport pins.

With each new aircraft, multiple pieces of information go in to our database so that we can properly display flights. Sometimes, our users have more information about the aircraft than we do. Often this is because they have a personal connection to the aircraft or because they’ve taken a special interest in a particular kind of aircraft.

This week we’ve made public a new tool that allows users to contribute aircraft data to the Flightradar24 database. This new tool allows users to who are logged in on Flightradar24.com to add basic aircraft data to live flights. The information is then sent to our database editors for approval and inclusion in the live site.

You can see how the tool works below. If a flight lacks data, there will be a + button in the Aircraft type field. Pressing the + will bring up the data entry form.

The data needed to fill out the form includes:

  1. aircraft registration (e.g., SP-LRA)
  2. ICAO type code (e.g., B788)
  3. Extended aircraft type (e.g., Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner)
  4. Manufacturer’s Serial Number (e.g,. 35938)

If the aircraft is privately owned that’s all the information needed. If it is a commercial aircraft, some more information is necessary:

  1. Airline name (e.g., LOT Polish Airlines)
  2. Airline ICAO code (e.g. LOT)
  3. Operator ICAO code (Optional field, as for some airlines, the operating carrier is different.)
  4. Date of first flight (Optional field)

Once the information has been submitted it can take up to 72 hours for the information to be included in the database. If you have multiple aircraft you’d like added to the database or if you see spot an error in an existing entry, please contact us.

A very big thank you to anyone who contributes aircraft information to the database!

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