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

By Clare Duffy, CNN

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

Turns out, there are a few apps that could help prevent that kind of confusion.

Apps like Flightradar24, Plane Finder and FlightAware all have features that let users see, in real-time, what aircraft are flying around them, including the thousands of commercial and private flights and helicopters that may be in the skies at any given time. In some cases, the apps can also identify unmanned aircraft, such as commercial drones that are signaling their location the same way planes 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 denoting the plane’s airline or a registration code for private aircraft.

With FlightRadar24 and Plane Finder, you can also point your phone camera at an aircraft in the sky and the apps will tell you about it, even at night — kind of like Shazam for airplanes.

Flightradar24 says that on any given day, it can track more than 200,000 aircraft through the skies. And following these planes has become a hobby for some people; for example, in August 2022, when a US Air Force plane carrying then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan, more than 700,000 people witnessed the event in real-time via Flightradar24.

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 have trouble identifying a plane on the app, you may need to zoom out on the map — experts say aircraft are often farther away than they appear to the human eye.

Of course, not every aircraft is going to show up on those platforms — some small hobby drones, for example, don’t contain the kind of technology to broadcast their locations the way commercial aircraft do. Some military and high-profile aircraft, like Air Force One, are also blocked.

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