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Is there any where I could find a map overlaid with the paths of all flights that came into a given airport on a given day?

I've found a lot of maps that show the current location of all flights, or the path of a single flight, but I haven't been able to find any that have the paths of many flights at once.

I don't really want to scan through every flight manually, but if I could see all of their paths I could pick out the ones that have interesting tangents for further study.

Background: I recently moved in to an apartment near an airport. I enjoy watching the flights come in, but one of my new roommates is less thrilled. He remarks that some of the flights seem to be pointed directly at our building until their final turn, so if the pilots were somehow incapacitated, we'd be in trouble. I think that's geometrically incorrect, but would like to prove it.

DeltaLima
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Whyteazea
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  • If you could explain what you need this map for, it would be more clear exactly what sort of data you are looking for – 60levelchange Feb 18 '17 at 18:19
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    For which airport? – acpilot Feb 18 '17 at 18:29
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    @J.Hougaard I need the map so I can see if the planes are actually on a path directly as my building for a significant amount of time. (So, frivolity.) This was originally in my post, but was edited out of it. – Whyteazea Feb 18 '17 at 19:23
  • @acpilot I'm interested in YTZ – Whyteazea Feb 18 '17 at 19:24
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    What airport is YTZ? – Simon Feb 18 '17 at 19:25
  • Toronto City Center – acpilot Feb 18 '17 at 19:30
  • Depending on what you actually want to know, and how far from the airport you are, you may as well look at the standard arrivals and departures trajectories. In practical all aircraft close to the airport use the same set of paths which are named STARs and SIDs. Indeed this needs some explanation as it's difficult to see where the paths are related to buildings, streets, etc. City Center seems to be a small airport, and most of the traffic is to/from Pearson. – mins Feb 18 '17 at 22:52
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    Some visual information here for City Center. – mins Feb 18 '17 at 23:11
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    I have written something like this for myself, see my answer here. However, it needs some basic knowledge about python. And it grabs the data right from flightradar24, I quess they don't like code being published to grab their data... However, I could do the job for you... – sweber Feb 19 '17 at 18:50
  • @mins Thanks, the illustrations in that document are very helpful! I didn't realize the landing paths were so specified. That's not quite as clear as an overhead map, but maybe I can use the identifiers from that document to find maps elsewhere. – Whyteazea Feb 20 '17 at 22:19
  • @sweber That's very neat, more or less what I was hoping to find. It's too bad the data isn't openly easily available. – Whyteazea Feb 20 '17 at 22:21
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    Your roommate realises there are 2 pilots at the controls, right? – Jamiec Dec 08 '17 at 15:05

5 Answers5

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Well you didn't state which airport you are interested in but obviously you only want data for a single airport.

You might want to look into a noise abatement reporting system. For instance, London Heathrow maintains the great website Webtrak (https://webtrak52.bksv.com/lhr4) to communicate with the pubic about changing SIDs, STARs and noise levels. (They already have much of the TMA over the heavily populated area, and they want to add another runway)

Douglas Held
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One option you have is to ask the airport for the data. They can deliver it to you in a shp-file that you can open with QGIS that is free software. With QGIS you can create maps and filter the radar tracks. All major airports often have a track monitoring system that saves data från the ATC-radar not from the ADS-B transponder. Usually the airport environmental department and the airport acoustics team/consultants have access to the historical flight track data.

Here are some examples of track monitoring systems that airports use

ANOMS

CASPER

TOPSONIC

FlightRadar24/FlightAwere etc. mostly consist of ADSB crowd input and is not fully reliable. Some airliners also send out the wrong position from their ADS-B transponder. That is called spoofing. To my knowledge FlightRadar24 only lets you export one path at a time.

You can also setup your own gear and record ADSB data with dump1090, that requires som skills, money and time.

Meatball
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    Can you refine you answer... "ask the airport for the data": Which organization at the airport? How does the airport have the full actual flight data (not the flight plan)? "FR24 mostly consist of ADSB input": Don't they have agreements with ANSP to get their data too? "Some airliners also send out the wrong position from their ADS-B transponder": How can that happen? (isn't the ADS-B ground receiver the faulty link of the chain?) "setup your own gear and record ADSB data": How can you get the full flight path from a local DS-B? – mins Nov 30 '17 at 12:46
  • Wait. You're saying there are airliners that are intentionally spoofing their location on ADS-B? Why? – Zach Lipton Feb 17 '18 at 19:36
  • I would also like to know that. – Meatball Mar 12 '18 at 12:04
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I would start with the approach charts for that airport, see if the flight paths are indeed over your housing, and at what altidude. The gov't published approach charts are here https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/digital_products/dtpp/

There are also sites like this one that show "live" (likely delayed some number of minutes) tracks of aircraft currently airborne. You can zoom in and see if any tracks are over your housing.

This is the Boston, MA area for instance: https://www.flightradar24.com/42.36,-71.01/7

And this one shows where they departed from and where they are landing https://www.radarbox24.com/@42.47000,-71.26623,z14

CrossRoads
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You mention the arrival path before the final turn to the runway, known as the base leg on a visual approach. When cleared for a visual approach the pilot flies the base leg as near or far from the runway as he or she sees fit based on altitude, distance, obstructions, traffic to be followed.

Jim Schmidt
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Start with the FAA on-time dataset:

https://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_SelectFields.asp

This is only for domestic flights but a good start.

Eli Draluk
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    Link doesn't work but from looking at the site I'm not sure where you would get the actual flight paths, just departure/arrival airports and times. – fooot Nov 30 '17 at 19:05