Flight tracker near me
Most flight trackers start with a flight number and follow its journey. This one starts with your location and continuously analyzes every aircraft over your patch of sky. Free, real time, nothing to install.
What is over you at this moment
This asks your browser for your location, queries the live feed, and lists the aircraft within 30 NM. Your position is used for the query and is not stored.
Nothing listed does not mean empty sky. AeroScope only sees aircraft broadcasting ADS-B within range of a volunteer receiver. See limitations.
Three steps, about ten seconds
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1. Set your spot | Allow location access or drop a pin on the map. Everything re-centers on that point and the nearest aircraft sort to the top by distance. |
| 2. Look up, then look down | Match what you can hear or see against the list. Aircraft on approach or climb-out are low and slow, while overflights sit at cruise altitude and move quickly across the display. |
| 3. Open the aircraft | Tap any track for type, operator, altitude, ground speed, squawk and the reasons behind its attention score. |
If you want a specific airport rather than your own position, the flights by airport index covers 44 major hubs and opens the map already centerd on each one.
"What is over me?" beats "where is flight X?"
Conventional trackers are built around a journey. You supply a flight number and follow it from gate to gate. That is exactly right when you are collecting someone from an airport, and largely useless when you are standing outside wondering what just went over the roof.
Anchoring to a place changes what the software can compute for you. Distance, bearing, elevation angle, proximity to your position and closeness to restricted airspace are all measured from your point rather than from an airport. Sorting by distance means the aircraft you can actually hear is the first row, not buried among a thousand tracks nationwide.
It also changes which questions are answerable. "Has anything been circling here for twenty minutes" is a question about a place, not a flight, and only a location-anchored tracker can answer it.
The questions people actually arrive with
| Question | Where to look |
|---|---|
| What plane just flew over? | The nearest track by distance, with type and operator. Full walkthrough in what is flying over my house. |
| Why is it going in circles? | Pattern classification labels orbits, racetracks and loiters. See why a plane is circling. |
| What is that helicopter? | Many helicopters broadcast ADS-B. See helicopter over my house. |
| Was that a military aircraft? | Military hex allocations and callsign patterns are flagged. See military planes over my house. |
| Should I be concerned? | Almost never, and the score explains itself. See is that aircraft a threat. |
| Is that aircraft even real? | Integrity and consistency checks flag broadcasts that contradict themselves. See detecting spoofing. |
Telling an arrival from an overflight
Altitude is the fastest way to interpret what you are looking at, and it is the field people most often misread.
- Above roughly 30,000 ft. An overflight in cruise. It is passing over your region, not going anywhere near you, and will be a distant contrail rather than a noise source.
- Roughly 10,000 to 30,000 ft. Climbing or descending, typically bound for an airport within a few hundred miles.
- Below about 10,000 ft. Approach, departure, or genuinely local flying. This is what you hear.
- Below about 3,000 ft and slow. Final approach, a helicopter, a survey aircraft, or training. Repeated passes usually mean circuits rather than anything unusual.
Note that ADS-B altitude is normally barometric and referenced to a standard pressure setting, so it is not a height above your garden. It is a flight level, and near the ground it can differ from true altitude by hundreds of feet.
What a local tracker cannot show you
- Not every aircraft appears. Only those broadcasting ADS-B within range of a volunteer receiver. Many older light aircraft, most small consumer drones and anything with its transponder off are invisible. Silence on the map is not proof of an empty sky.
- Coverage varies by where you are. Dense over North America and Europe, thin over oceans and remote terrain. See coverage.
- It is near real time, not instant. There is latency between broadcast, republication, fetch and your screen. Positions are current to within seconds.
- Identity can be imperfect. Registry data can be stale and some operators mask identity deliberately.
The full list is on the limitations page, and it is worth reading before drawing conclusions from anything you see.