Want to know what’s flying overhead? There’s an app for that

New York
CNN
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People in New Jersey are freaking out(!) over sightings of what they say appear to be “giant drones” flying around at night. Government officials have said that at least some of these sightings are just plain old commercial flights.

It turns out there are a few apps that can help prevent that kind of confusion.

Apps like Flightradar24, Plane Finder and FlightAware all have features that let users see in real time what planes are flying around them, including the thousands of commercial and private flights and helicopters that may be in the air at any given time. In some cases apps can also identify unmanned aircraft, such as commercial drones, that signal their location in the same way that airplanes do.

With these apps – or their websites – you can open a map of your location and see the air traffic above you, along with details about individual aircraft, such as its altitude, speed and destination. You may also see a code indicating the airline of the flight or a registration code for private aircraft.

With FlightRadar24 and Plane Finder, you can also point your phone camera at a plane in the sky and the apps will tell you about it, even at night – kind of like Shazam for planes.

Flight radar24 says that on any given day it can track more than 200,000 aircraft through the sky. And following these planes has become a hobby for some people; e.g. in August 2022, when a US Air Force plane carrying then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan, more than 700,000 people watched the event in real time via Flight radar24.

These apps work by collecting the data that most aircraft transmit to ground stations and other aircraft, known as “ADS-B” data, as well as satellites and other data sources.

But if you’re having trouble identifying a plane on the app, you may need to zoom out on the map — experts say planes are often farther away than they appear to the human eye.

Of course, not all aircraft will appear on these platforms — some small hobby drones, for example, don’t include the kind of technology to broadcast their locations that commercial aircraft do. Some military and high-profile aircraft, such as Air Force One, are also blocked.