LIVE · SAN FRANCISCO (SFO)

Live flights over San Francisco

See every aircraft over San Francisco Airport (SFO/KSFO) in real time — its type, operator, altitude, origin and destination, and an attention score — fused from 60+ public ADS-B feeds and refreshed about every seven seconds.

Open the live map over San Francisco ↗How to read it
Quick answer. San Francisco Airport (SFO / KSFO) sits at 37.6198, -122.3748 near San Francisco, United States, at 13 ft elevation. To see what is flying over it right now, open AeroScope centred on those coordinates: it lists every aircraft overhead with type, operator, altitude and a 0–100 attention score, fused from 60+ ADS-B feeds and de-duplicated by ICAO 24-bit address.
Airport data

San Francisco at a glance

IATA codeSFO
ICAO codeKSFO
AirportSan Francisco International Airport
CitySan Francisco, United States
Coordinates37.6198, -122.3748
Elevation13 ft

Track flights over San Francisco now ↗

What you will see

Reading the sky over San Francisco

Around a hub like San Francisco, most of what is overhead is routine: airliners and cargo aircraft on published arrival and departure procedures, general aviation, and helicopters. AeroScope is observer-relative — instead of asking “where is flight X,” you fix the map on San Francisco and it continuously evaluates everything above it. Each aircraft carries a transparent 0–100 attention score built from eight rule-based factors (emergency squawk, military hex allocation, proximity, altitude and speed anomalies, loitering patterns and integrity-check failures), so the one worth a second look rises to the top instead of hiding in the traffic.

Spoofed or self-inconsistent broadcasts are flagged too: AeroScope runs a DO-260B integrity check (NIC/NACp/NACv/SIL), a Kalman normalised-innovation test and geometric-versus-barometric altitude residuals, and only raises a flag when at least two independent detectors agree.

Nearby

Other airports near San Francisco

See also: military aircraft tracking, is that aircraft a threat?, and how AeroScope works.

FAQ

Flights over San Francisco — FAQ

What planes fly over San Francisco?
Most traffic over San Francisco near San Francisco Airport (SFO) is scheduled airline and cargo flights on published arrival and departure routes, plus general aviation and helicopters. AeroScope shows each aircraft overhead in real time with its type, operator and altitude — open the live map centred on San Francisco to see the current picture.
How high do planes fly over San Francisco?
It depends on distance from the runway. Aircraft on final approach or initial climb near San Francisco (SFO) may be only a few thousand feet up, while overflights cruise at 30,000–40,000 ft. AeroScope shows the barometric altitude of every aircraft, so you can tell an arrival or departure from a high overflight.
Can I see military or unusual aircraft over San Francisco?
Sometimes. A large share of military and state aircraft broadcast ADS-B just like airliners, and AeroScope surfaces those over San Francisco with an explanation of why each was flagged, plus a 0–100 attention score. Some sensitive flights operate without ADS-B and cannot be seen by any crowdsourced tracker.
Is it legal to track flights over San Francisco?
Yes. AeroScope uses only public ADS-B broadcasts that aircraft transmit openly on 1090 MHz and that volunteer receiver networks republish freely. Viewing this public data over San Francisco Airport is legal; AeroScope simply adds fusion, integrity checks and anomaly analysis on top of it.