Flightradar24
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Type of site
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Monitoring of aircraft |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Headquarters |  , Sweden |
| Country of origin | Sweden |
| Owner | Flightradar24 AB |
| Website | Flightradar24.com |
| Alexa rank |
 1,622 (October 2016) |
| Commercial | Partially |
| Registration | Freemium |
| Launched | 2006 |
| Current status | Active |
Flightradar24 is a Swedish internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight information on a map. It includes flight tracks, origins and destinations, flight numbers, aircraft types, positions, altitudes, headings and speeds. It can also show time-lapse replays of previous tracks and historical flight data by airline, aircraft, aircraft type, area or airport. It aggregates data from multiple sources but, outside of the United States, mostly from crowdsourced information gathering by volunteers with ADS-B receivers. The service was founded as a hobby in 2006 by two Swedish aviation enthusiasts. It is available via a web page or mobile device apps. The Guardian considers the site to be "authoritative".
Flightradar24 aggregates data from three sources:
The site blocks some ADS-B information from display for "security and privacy" purposes. For instance, the position of the Japanese Air Force One aircraft used by the Japanese emperor and prime minister was visible on the site until August 2014, when the Japanese Ministry of Defense requested that the information be blocked. This has subsequently meant that the aircraft no longer has its flight track posted online or on the site.
The service was founded by two Swedish aviation enthusiasts in 2006 for Northern and Central Europe, who then opened it up to, allowing anyone with a suitable ADS-B receiver to contribute data in 2009. The service received extensive exposure in 2010 when international media relied on it to describe the flight disruption over the north Atlantic and Europe caused by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruptions.
In 2014 it was used by multiple major news outlets following several high-profile crashes. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and in July 2014 after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, and in December when Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 went missing. Flightradar24 reported that its web traffic increased to around 50 times normal and caused some access congestion to users.
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