Track flights with a Google Maps Mashup

Filed under: Developer, Fun, Internet, Web services, Google

Track flights with a Google Maps Mashup

by Chris Gilmer Sep 4th 2007

Have a friend that's coming in for a landing and want to see exactly where they are at the moment? Or if you just like watching planes, check out the GMaps Flight Tracker. This Google Maps mashup tracks the status of inbound flights scheduled to land in Atlanta, Boston, New York's JFK, LA, Miami and San Francisco. Pick your city, and a list of the arriving flights are displayed. Click or mouse over the airline flight number of plane icon and the altitude, speed and heading coordinates are displayed as well as flight trail waypoints so you can check out the travel path.

The inbound flight schedule refreshes every 40 seconds so flight statuses are ensured to be at their most accurate. Data is provided from fboweb.com and based on the position reports for each aircraft once per minute, and sometimes once every 20 seconds in high traffic areas. Want to check things out in 3d? Download the GE kml file and check out past flights and height profiles in Google Earth.

Tags: api, flight, flight tracker, FlightTracker, google, google maps, GoogleMaps, maps, mashup

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dorv said 10:38AM on 9-04-2007

Where's the ge file?

Chris Gilmer said 10:54AM on 9-04-2007

If you see the 'Download GE kml'link when viewing flights, right click and save as. This is only available for select flights.

zkam said 11:31AM on 9-04-2007

Note that this doesn't seem to work right in FireFox with Adblock Plus enabled.

zkam said 11:31AM on 9-04-2007

Oh, and if you download the KML and add it to Google Earth, you get to see the flight path with elevation too (i.e. it's in 3D - rotate down to see planes at different altitudes). At least that's how it was when I did this a year ago.

Allen said 12:52PM on 9-04-2007

Cool - I just did a video review:
http://www.centernetworks.com/video-review-google-maps-mashup-tracking-inbound-flights

I'm not sure we need this type of tool.

Evren said 3:41PM on 9-04-2007

I reviewed this service 2 days ago on http://www.bilgiselhayat.com/index.php/google-maps-firtinasi-1/
You can check my review and some other cool mashups. Yes, I am a fan of downloadsquad. And yes, my site is Turkish. :)

thehack said 11:56PM on 9-05-2007

Excellent a new tool to make stalking people so much easier. With Facebook and Spock and now this tool soon all the gaps will be closed.

http://geekwonk.com/

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