About This Project
A hobbyist aviation tracking site — what it is, how it works, and a walkthrough of everything it can do.
A hobbyist project built around a simple idea: let anyone see what aircraft are flying near them, and build up a personal log of every flight that's passed overhead. The site pulls from public APIs and community-run virtual radar feeds to populate its database, so all you need is a location, an account, and an active subscription to start tracking.
The database stores aircraft registrations, callsigns, route data, and operator details gathered passively over time. The more flights pass through, the richer it gets. Anyone can browse the database for free, but registered accounts get extra layers of personalisation, and an active subscription unlocks live overhead tracking tied to your specific location. Personal sighting history is kept for the last 30 days, after which older entries age out automatically.
For developers, the same data is also accessible via API, so you can pull aircraft information directly into your own applications if you want to build something on top of it.
A set of background processes run continuously behind the scenes, each with a specific role — pulling data from public sources and writing it into the database in real time:
- Per-account location tracking: When an active subscriber has a location set, a dedicated background process queries live flight-tracking feeds for aircraft within that area. Any aircraft passing within range is automatically logged to that account, building a personal sighting history for the last 30 days.
- Aircraft & route indexing: Separate background processes continuously pull from a network of community-operated virtual radar feeders to enrich the database with new aircraft registrations, callsigns, route data, and operator information. On average, around 1,000 new aircraft and 500 routes are indexed every day.
- Storage: All collected data lands in our database, which is queried to serve every page, API response, and per-account dataset across the site.
Global Tracking vs. Regional Indexing
Our system uses two different data streams. Live flight positions and basic telemetry are sourced from flight tracking feeds with global coverage. However, the rich aircraft data (operator, specific type, and callsign route data) is populated by indexing feeds sourced from community-run virtual radar feeders.
Currently, these indexing feeders actively monitor:
- Europe — General: Pan-Europe and general multi-region feeds
- Europe — United Kingdom: Scotland, the Midlands, and Edgeley
- Europe — Germany: Eastern, Western, and Southern regions
- Europe — Switzerland: General coverage
- Europe — Italy: Northern region
- North America — Canada: Atlantic region
- North America — USA: South Dakota
- Oceania: ANZ & SE Asia
- Global: Asia, Middle East, and Africa (partial)
The Database Advantage: Because our tracking and indexing are separate, an aircraft only needs to pass through one of these feeder regions once to have its rich data permanently stored in our database. If that aircraft later flies over your area — even if there is zero active indexing coverage near you — our global flight tracking feed will spot it, and the system will automatically pull its full historical profile from the database.
Because live tracking is global, an aircraft's position, registration, and basic telemetry will almost always be accurate no matter where you are. Richer details (aircraft type, operator, historical routes) depend on that aircraft having been indexed by a community feeder at least once in its lifetime. While active feeder coverage has geographical gaps, our database remembers every indexed aircraft indefinitely — meaning you will often see full flight details even in completely uncovered airspace.
Most of the site is open to everyone — browsing aircraft, searching the database, and exploring the live map are all available without an account. Beyond that, there are two account tiers:
Free Account Free
- Full search & browse access to the database
- Total Seen / Last Seen stat columns on search & operator results Visible on every account, but these won't update unless you have an active subscription tracking aircraft.
- A personal sightings column on the Countries page
- API access — 10 requests per day, manage your key from My Account
- Optional daily or weekly email digest, available on every account
Active Subscription Active
- Everything in the free account
- Set a tracking location — any flight within 5 miles is logged automatically
- Active Flights page and full-screen Kiosk Mode
- Your Sighting History dashboard — a 30-day log of aircraft, callsigns & routes
- Deeper per-aircraft and per-callsign tracking detail on the Search page, including route maps
- A meaningful email digest — busiest routes, most/least common aircraft, and your sighting rate
What an active subscriber sees — e.g. the Sightings dashboard or a tracked aircraft's route map
A Tour of the Site
Here's a walkthrough of every page, what it shows, and which account tier you'll need to see the full picture.
The homepage is the live front door of the site — everything currently overhead, plus a snapshot of database-wide and personal activity.
Local Flight Tracker
A live, auto-updating list of aircraft currently within range of your set location. Guests see a prompt to log in; free accounts see a locked, blurred preview explaining that an active subscription is required; active subscribers see the full live table, complete with registration, route, type, altitude, speed, and how many times each aircraft or callsign has been seen before.
Local flight tracker, live view
Recently Indexed Aircraft
A card gallery and a full list of the newest additions to the database, each linking through to the aircraft's own search result. Visible to everyone — no personalisation involved.
Recent Sightings Active
A rolling log of your own tracked flights from the last 30 days — callsign, registration, type, operator, and route, each linking back to a full record. Locked for guests and free accounts.
Our Database in Numbers
Global totals for airframes, callsigns, operators, airports, and runways, visible to everyone. Active subscribers also see a personal summary — sightings in the last 30 days, and how many aircraft are active right now.
Top Operators
A ranked list of the operators with the largest fleets currently indexed in the database, with a quick link through to the full Operators directory.
An interactive world map of Flight Information Regions (FIRs), showing each region's boundaries along with the airports inside it.
- Airport runways are drawn to scale directly on the map.
- Clicking an airport surfaces details like which FIR it belongs to, its elevation, and its coordinates.
FIR map with airports and runways
Search by registration, serial number, aircraft type, operator, or callsign. As a guest, you have full read access to the database — every aircraft, route, and operator record is browsable without an account, including aircraft photos pulled from a third-party image API.
Free accounts see an extra Total Seen / Last Seen column in the results list for both aircraft and callsigns — though these stay at zero and won't update unless you have an active subscription actively tracking aircraft. Active subscribers get a deeper layer on top of every detail page: look up a registration and you'll also see Your Recent Callsigns & Routes for the last 30 days, plotted on a route map. Search a callsign and the same applies, with your overhead sighting log for that specific flight shown alongside the database entry.
Guest search view
Active subscriber view, with tracking history and route map
A sortable, searchable directory of every airline, military force, and private operator detected in the database, with fleet size and unique route/callsign counts visible to everyone.
Logged-in accounts (free or active) see two extra columns — Total Sightings and Last Active — based on their own tracking history. These are visible on every account, but will simply stay at zero and won't update unless you have an active subscription with a tracking location set, since that's what generates sightings in the first place.
Operators directory
An alphabetical breakdown of every country represented in the database, showing how many airlines are registered there and the total size of their combined aircraft fleet. It's a useful way to get a sense of which nations have the heaviest footprint in the tracked data.
Logged-in accounts see an additional My Sightings column alongside each country. It's visible on every account, but the figures only move once you have an active subscription generating sightings.
Countries list
A browsable, searchable catalogue of every aircraft manufacturer, ICAO type code, and model in the database, grouped alphabetically by manufacturer. This page isn't tied to any individual account — the data is the same for everyone, giving a broad picture of what's been recorded across all tracked airspace.
Aircraft type index, grouped by manufacturer
A dedicated page for active subscribers that lists every aircraft currently being tracked within your set location, with full detail on each one rather than the condensed homepage view. Registration, callsign, aircraft type, operator, altitude, speed, heading, and route are all visible at a glance, alongside aircraft photos.
Toggle Kiosk Mode and the page switches to a full-screen, dark map view focused on a single aircraft at a time — whichever is currently closest to your location — automatically cycling to the next as it passes, complete with an animated altitude-coloured route projection. Built to run untouched on a screen or TV, it works like a live overhead feed showing one flight at a time, in full detail.
If you're logged in but don't yet have an active subscription, this page shows an upgrade prompt instead, linking through to Pricing.
Full list view
Kiosk mode
Your personal sightings dashboard — a complete record of every aircraft and callsign that has passed within range of your set location over the last 30 days, automatically logged without any manual input.
- Route map: A live map plotting every unique route from your tracked callsigns.
- Aircraft: A searchable, sortable table of every registration you've tracked, with total times seen and last-seen date. Tapping a row opens a detail drawer with full aircraft and model information plus photos.
- Callsigns: The same, but grouped by callsign, with route and operator shown inline.
- All flights: A raw, timestamped feed of every individual sighting from the last 30 days — callsign, registration, route, type, and operator for each one.
Logged-in accounts without an active subscription are shown a "Subscription Required" notice instead, linking through to Pricing.
Personal sightings dashboard
Your account hub — where your plan, profile, tracking location, and API access are all managed. Everything here is personal to your account and determines how the site behaves for you.
- Account summary: Your current status, plan tier, and member-since date at a glance.
- Area to Track Active: Pin your location on a map, or type coordinates directly. Any aircraft passing within a 5-mile radius is automatically logged to your sightings. Locked behind an active subscription.
- API usage & keys Free: Available to both free and active accounts. Generate a single API key, see your daily usage against your tier's limit, and revoke it at any time.
- Active sessions & security activity: See every device currently signed in, revoke individual sessions, and review a log of recent account and security events.
- Profile & email preferences: Update your display name, and choose to receive a daily or weekly email digest covering your tracking stats — busiest routes, most and least common aircraft, your sighting rate, and more — or turn it off entirely. Available on every account, though it's only meaningful once an active subscription is generating sightings.
- Change password and a Danger Zone for signing out everywhere or permanently clearing your tracked flight data.
Profile & account settings
A straightforward web application built on standard, widely-used technologies, combining a handful of public data sources into one platform behind the scenes.
- Data collection: A set of background processes continuously pull from public flight-tracking feeds and a network of community-operated virtual radar feeders, averaging around 1,000 new aircraft and 500 routes indexed per day.
- Interface: Built with standard web technologies. Interactive maps are rendered using Leaflet.js, with great-circle route projections for flight paths.
- Data storage: Aircraft registrations, callsigns, routes, operators, and per-account sighting records (kept for 30 days) are stored in our database.
- Data sources: Live flight positions from public flight-tracking feeds; aircraft and route enrichment from community-operated virtual radar feeds; aircraft photos via a third-party image API.