Planes above you right now
Heard a plane overhead? See the aircraft flying within about 110 km of your city: callsign, height, speed and heading, on a simple radar that updates every 30 seconds.
Plane data comes from the OpenSky Network through our server, for the whole UAE at once. Your city or location is never sent: the planes near you are picked out on your phone. Nothing is saved.
Looking for planes…
How can a website see planes?
Most airliners carry ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast). The plane works out its own position from satellite navigation and broadcasts it, with its height, speed and callsign, about once a second on 1090 MHz. Air traffic control and other planes listen.
The signal is not encrypted, so a small antenna on a rooftop can pick it up from up to a few hundred kilometres away. The OpenSky Network collects these messages from thousands of volunteer and research receivers around the world.
OpenSky has fewer receivers in the Gulf than in Europe, so some planes are not picked up, especially low ones far from a receiver. Military and some private aircraft do not broadcast or are hidden. This is for curiosity, not for safety or navigation.
The callsign is the flight's radio name: three letters for the operator and a flight number. "Country" is where the plane is registered, not where it flew from. Height is from the plane's pressure altimeter.
Sources: Live aircraft positions: The OpenSky Network (opensky-network.org), a non-profit association based in Switzerland; Matthias Schäfer and others, "Bringing Up OpenSky: A Large-scale ADS-B Sensor Network for Research", IPSN 2014. OpenSky's REST API gives the most recent positions at 10-second resolution to anonymous users, with a daily allowance of API credits (400 a day anonymous, 4,000 for a free account); our server asks once for a box around the UAE (1 credit) and shares the answer with every visitor for 30 seconds or more. OpenSky does not allow direct browser requests. ADS-B: broadcasts on 1090 MHz about once per second from satellite-navigation positions (Airlabs, "ADS-B explained"). Cruising heights of about 30,000 to 42,000 ft: Flight Deck Friend, "How high do planes fly?". Coastline: Natural Earth (public domain), simplified. Callsigns and registrations are shown as broadcast; no airline names or logos are shown. Not for navigation or safety use.