Live Flights – Watching Aircraft in Real Time

Summary: How to switch on live flight tracking, filter by altitude, follow an aircraft, and control labels, the data block and sound alerts.

Switch on Live Flights in the Layers panel to see real-time aircraft positions over the UK and near Europe, updated continuously. A live count badge on the layer shows how many aircraft are in the area being tracked.

All Aircraft vs. Military Only

The Mode switch at the top of the Live Flights section has two sides. The side that’s on is filled in solid colour, and the line underneath says what the map is showing. Click the other side to switch, or click the side that’s on to turn Live Flights off:

• All Aircraft — every tracked aircraft in range. Search and rescue, police, government, contractor and air ambulance aircraft are ringed in their own colour so they stand out.
• Military Only — filters the map down to military traffic (see Military Flight Filters & the Live Military Board for what’s available in this mode).

Filtering by Altitude

Use the altitude-band buttons to show or hide aircraft by height band: GND (on the ground), Low (1,000–10,000 ft), Mid (FL100–FL250), and High (FL250+). Combine bands to focus on, say, just low-level traffic near an airfield.

Following an Aircraft

Click any aircraft icon to select it, then choose Track to keep the map centred on it as it moves — handy for following a single flight without manually panning. Click Track again, or select a different aircraft, to stop.

Coverage: the UK and Near Europe

Live Flights covers a circle roughly 500 nautical miles across the UK: Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, southern Norway and the Faroes are inside it, while Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Bordeaux and Oslo are just outside.

• While the map shows only the UK and Ireland, it gets UK traffic and updates about every second.
• Zoom out or pan beyond that, and it switches to the whole coverage area. With All Aircraft that is a much bigger list, so it updates every 5 seconds instead; Military Only stays fast either way. Zoom back into the UK and it switches back.
• Only aircraft in the part of the map on your screen are drawn, which keeps the map quick with thousands of aircraft being tracked.

Some features stay focused on the UK: frequency predictions stop outside UK airspace (see Reading the Aircraft Info Panel), push notifications only cover the UK area, and the flight history keeps civil traffic for the UK area only (see Replaying Past Flight Traffic).

The Aircraft Table

The table button in the button stack on the right of the map opens a sortable list of the aircraft in view along the bottom of the map. Its Auto Select button keeps the information panel on whichever aircraft is closest to you – see The Aircraft Table.

The Options Row

Under the mode switch is a row of chips, each remembered with your profile:

• Emergency Alert — zoom to an aircraft squawking an emergency (see Emergency Squawk Alerts).
• Track and Auto Select — follow the selected aircraft, or keep the panel on the nearest one.
• Notify — turn a search into a watchlist (see Searching for a Specific Aircraft).
• Labels — a permanent data block under every aircraft in view, from zoom level 8 and closer. The chip stays on when you zoom out; the labels come back as you zoom in.
• Sound — a distinct tone for emergency squawks and zone alerts, even if the map tab isn’t in focus.
• Enable Push — alerts when the map is closed.
• Equipment — off by default. The feed lists tower transponders, airport vehicles and obstacles among the aircraft; with this on they’re drawn as small grey squares and counted separately (“451 aircraft + 17 equipment”).
• Unplaced Mil — military aircraft the networks receive but cannot place. For everyone, an aircraft flying with a formation mate that is placed is drawn beside it, with a green ring and a tooltip saying whom it flies with — a real fix of the wingman, not a guess.

Your Own Data Block

What the label shows is yours to choose. Open Customise panel (the sliders button in the Layers panel header) and under Aircraft data block tick any of Callsign, Aircraft type, Flight level and Squawk, spread them over one to four lines, and choose whether the block sits above or below the aircraft. Every label on show repaints at once, and the choice is saved with your panel settings.

Military Icons

Military aircraft are drawn with their own shapes — fast jets, tandem trainers (Texan, Prefect, Tucano), Tutors, Spitfires, Wildcats, tankers, transports, Reapers and so on — so you can tell a Texan from a Typhoon before you click. A known prop type keeps its shape whatever size class the transponder sends.

For details on what’s shown when you click an individual aircraft, see Reading the Aircraft Info Panel. For notifications when the map isn’t open, see the Alerts & Notifications category.