For the first time ever, nationwide flight tracking, airport delays and status updates, real-time maps, and flight alerts are available for private and commercial flights throughout Australia.
As of 8am this morning, the FlightAware aircraft tracking services will be available for Australian general aviation and commercial flights. FlightAware are the first (public) tracking service to provide this data for Australian airspace.
The Flight Aware services include:
- Nationwide Australian live flight tracking and status (private and commercial flights)
- Real-time maps with zoom/pan, map styles (e.g., satellite earth view), Google Earth integration
- Worldwide airport delays and airport status
- Mobile apps (iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, WP7, Symbian)
- Flight alerts (via email, text message, Facebook, Twitter) including pre-arrival notifications
- Flight radar track log (time, latitude, longitude, speed, heading) with graphs
- Gate assignments, times, and delays for airline flights
- Aircraft photos for over 100,000 aircraft, live aviation news, and aviation email newsletters
FlightAware CEO Daniel Baker said in a press statement that “FlightAware’s flight tracking technology and services are a tremendous tool for pilots, dispatchers, and airports, as well as airline passengers. We are excited to be able to expand our reach and offer all of our services to the Australian aviation community.”
FlightAware have a robust XML-based API that permits operators, FBO’s, geeks airport operators and developers to make use of the information available on the FlightAware servers for use in their own software, scheduling applications and/or passenger notification services. Most mobile applications that already source their data from FlightAware.com should be able to make the new information available almost immediately. Applications are already available for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, WP7 and Symbian handsets. Our own (Android) application is in very early development and should be available this year.
Australian aircraft operators that do not wish for their flight details to appear on FlightAware.com can opt-out by contacting them via their website. FlightAware also offers a commercial product for operators that opt-out but would like to retain secure, selective access to their flight details.
Airports can be viewed by adding the four-letter ICAO airport code to the end of the access URL. For example, you can view Sydney data at http://flightaware.com/live/airport/YSSY and Brisbane data at http://flightaware.com/live/airport/YBBN.
Visit FlightAware’s website at FlightAware.com and follow them on Twitter at @FlightAware
Related posts:
About Marty
So this is combining ADSB and live radar? Not sure how else they would be getting the GA information. If so then this is different to sites like Planefinder,net and others that only use the ADSB data and miss lots of the GA activity.
However I don’t see much activity around YSBK – like circuits and other departures that you would see on the CASA service?
I’m not actually sure, Ross. Most of the information on their site seems to come from IFR flight plans, so it’s possible that they’re the only flights they track.
GA aircraft would almost certainly clutter up the screen, especially around Sydney.
I’ll look into it.
Interesting they would be grabbing info direct from an IFR flight plan, not sure how they display actual location information from it. Would have thought it would have been easier to get the same info that Airservices are using on the WebTrak website http://webtrak.bksv.com/syd
which shows all radar traffic, even those in the circuit & training area at Bankstown
They wouldn’t be getting location details from IFR flight plans; my thinking is that the IFR plans are simply the only flights that they’re tracking – but I’m guessing. They would have to be using ADSB and/or radar returns – but I have no idea of where they obtain their information.
Much of the oceanic stuff you see from FlightAware is ‘predictive’. Based on speed and a filed plan they estimate a position that we see rendered on their website until more accurate data becomes available. I’ve followed one of our own aircraft that diverted into Fiji that continued on its planned track until the IFR plan propagated its way around the system (despite sat-based ATSB broadcasts being made).
http://webtrak.bksv.com/syd is fascinating. Thanks!
I’ve sent FA an email and I’ll be sure to post their response here.
Hi, guys. We get data from many sources including ATC entities, airlines, satellite, etc, and attempt to synthesize this into a (set of) realtime picture(s) of what’s happening.
Almost all IFR flights touching Australia should be trackable on FlightAware while they’re in Australian airspace as long as they have a determinable (by us) origin and destination.
VFR is generally tricky to impossible (with everyone squawking 1200 or equivalent, etc) and there are ATC issues related to VFR flight following that make it tricky/painful, although we will eventually be showing more ephemeral flights as well.
As for transoceanic flights, we rely mostly on transoceanic position reports and satellite positioning for some aircraft and airlines. If we don’t receive word of a diversion then we will project the flight all the way to its destination. This will be indicated by “ESTIMATED” on the map data block, a white track with a growing error circle around the aircraft, and “flight results unknown” shown once the flight “should have” reached its destination.
As our coverage increases, our tracking gets more accurate, cf Australia where our extended coverage doesn’t just provide intra-Australia tracking but also improves our accuracy on international flights touching Australia.
Good times.
Karl Lehenbauer / FlightAware
Thanks for your response, Karl. Take care. M.
I wonder if it’s as accurate as Flight Explorer? They have had Australian data from Airservices Australia for some time now. Is this same data feed now available in Flight Aware??