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(CNN) — On an average day, more than 200,000 flights take off and land around the world. That includes commercial, cargo and charter aircraft — about half of the total — as well as business jets, private planes, helicopters, air ambulances, government and military aircraft, drones, hot air balloons and gliders.
Most are equipped with a transponder, a device that transmits the aircraft’s position and other flight information to air traffic control, and this signal can be captured by inexpensive receivers for automatic dependent tracking-broadcast based on a technology called ADS-B. That’s what flight tracking websites do in a nutshell, give users a snapshot of everything in the sky (with a few exceptions).
ADS-B receiver made by Flightradar24.
Courtesy Flightradar24
The plane, the C40, a military version of the Boeing 737, took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before beginning a circuitous route to Taiwan to avoid contact with the Chinese military. It was not immediately clear what that final destination would be, sparking chatter online as the plane slowly headed north toward the island. As a result, it was the most tracked flight on Fluladar24 with 2.92 million people following at least seven hours of travel.
Part of the FlylyAware and Plane Finder group of popular flight tracking services, the website was launched in 2011. It was founded in Sweden in 2006 “completely by accident,” says FlightRadar24 communications director Ian Petchenik as a way to drive traffic to flights. Price comparison service.
Demand is increasing.
Prior to Pelosi’s flight, the most tracked flight on Flightradar24 was Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s trip back to Russia to face arrest. In the year The January 2021 flight was watched by 550,000 people, beating the record set in April 2020, when nearly 200,000 users saw a Boeing 777 flying the Turkish national flag with the crescent and star symbols to celebrate Turkey’s 100th anniversary. Sovereignty.
Before that, in September 2017, thousands watched as a brave Delta Boeing 737 flew into Hurricane Irma as it landed in Puerto Rico, and 40 minutes later the hurricane took off, nestling itself in the gap between its arms.
Outside of major events, however, the number of people tracking flights is steadily increasing: “We see more people using the site to track a loved one, track their own flight or find an incoming flight. To be later that day, to confirm the arrival of the plane,” says Petchenik.
“Another use case is people who are very interested in aviation or who like to follow certain types of aircraft. They can also go to the airport and pull out the application and see what’s coming. Then you have people who are invested in the profession. The aviation industry because they have aircraft and lease them or they have many types of aircraft and track them. There are people who are professionally invested in eventually having more flight data because they want it.Airlines, airports, aircraft manufacturers are using big data sets to gain industry insights.
How information is collected
To collect the data, Flaradar has built its own ADS-B receiver network, which is currently the largest in the world at around 34,000 units, and covers areas as far away as Antarctica.
Flightradar24 has receivers all over the world, including remote locations like Antarctica.
Courtesy Flightradar24
About a quarter of the receivers are built by Flightradar24 itself, but most are collected by enthusiasts who volunteer the data. Because building a receiver is relatively cheap — parts generally cost about $100 — many have signed up since Flightradar24 began opening its network to the public in 2009.
Dense receivers are necessary to track flights globally, but there is an obvious problem over oceans, where the network becomes smaller. So how do you get coverage on the open water?
“Finding islands where we can and making sure we have receivers,” Petchenik says. But more recently we’ve switched to satellite ADS-B receivers to better track aircraft over the ocean. However, the primary source of information is still our own terrestrial network.
Having such a small and localized amount of data can be useful for early understanding of emergencies and disasters: “We store everything that comes to our servers and, if necessary, we can go back to a different receiver and extract the raw data. That is often the case. “Only if we make a request from a supplier or accident investigation branch,” says Petchenik.
Not all information is available for each aircraft, but this depends on the type of transponder and receiver.
Owners or operators of aircraft can decide to prevent their data from being made public, usually for military, government or private aircraft. For example, you can sign up for a program like LADD for the Federal Aviation Administration’s “limitation of aircraft data”: “We shop on that list,” says Petchenik.
“Operators allow their data to be displayed differently, anonymized, or in some cases not displayed at all. About 3% of the total number of aircraft we track each day have a specific data display rule.”
Top Image: A Boeing C-40C carrying US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi takes off from Taipei Sushan on August 3, 2022, one day after Flight SPAR19 became the first flight ever tracked by Flaerradar24.
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