To bloody hate flight radar

[witchofzog]

I am away at the moment with friends in a house about half hour from the nearest airport. It's a huge European airport. They have all gone inside for a snooze and I am outside on a sun lounger to read my book.

Except I can't read my bloody book cos it turns out we are on the flight path and there are loads of planes passing over. I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with wanting to know where planes are going and have come from so I can't even read more than a couple of pages without having to flick back to bloody flight radar to check. I do this at home too but the planes seem to be every hour or so there. Here it's relentless.

I have already broken off twice from this post to work out that the planes passing are from Munich and Gothenburg respectively. This enhances my life in no way at all yet I can't help myself.

It was Mumsnet who told me about Flight Radar. Who do I complain to?!

I live near gatwick and one of my fav walks is to go along and sit under the flight path as they land (or takeoff) - i used to work at the airport and used Flightradar all the time for our own planes. I could lose entire days, watching it.

I am in Ireland at the moment and I confess to being a FR geek. But wait for this..... here they have "LIVE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL"!! I don't think it is available in the UK for security reasons or something.

Anyway, you can open F radar, and tune into Live ATC for your nearest airport, and can both track the flight and listen to those lovely calm pilots and ATCrs guiding the planes in. It is great if it is windy and they have to stack up or do go arounds or divert.

I love it! But some people like making patchwork quilts don't they!

*PastBananas" please stop!!

Thanks for putting me onto this, I forsee many lost hours. Does it not show all flights? Live a few miles from the airport, can see and hear something overhead now but according to flight radar there is nothing within 20 miles

Wait - explain about the fight paths. Do they show the whole flight path, or just some time in the past? Because if it's the whole thing, some planes are taking off from a place I had no idea had an airport...

To go with flightradar, Marinetraffic for shipping.

I'm under the approach for Bristol airport-they are usually starting to bank round and lower their wheels above us. If I think that a plane is particularly low then I start to track it...

here they have "LIVE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL"!!

Oh I love the flight radar app. I didn’t realise other normal people used it, it was my retired dad who showed it to me. He spends his days in the garden tracking all the flights going over. He also showed me the shipping app but I couldn’t get excited about that one.
I tracked a fight recently that a friend was on, and using the AR function I got a pic of it going over our house, she thought that was really cool

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

It is amazing tbh. Best used on a desktop/laptop with FR open and Live ATC open at the same time. Once you know the call sign of the flight you are tracking you can hear it being guided in and watch it landing at the same time. OMG it is just so addictive.

Everyone in ATC is just so calm, as are the pilots, especially when they are told to go in the holding pattern, or divert or whatever, they take it in their stride. Very comforting for those with flying phobias I think, although thankfully I'm not one of them.

Myself and DH used to play a game while we waited to collect DD1 from school while DS slept when he was out of work for two months a while back. We aren't far from the airport (DUB) and can watch the planes either take off or land depending on the wind. We can usually see the airline but guess where it's going and then check FR to see if we're right!

I love FR.

www.flightradar24.com/53.78,-1.75/7

For all those asking what it is

Find your town on the map, zoom in and you can click on the yellow planes and track it.
It'll tell you where it's come from and where it's going.
Verrrry addictive, you'll lose hours lol.
Especially like me if you google all the little villages you're flying over in random countries say Germany or Canada

@January87

My cousin brought me out there the other evening. It is the Old Airport Road near the cemetery. There were cars lined up by the dozen watching the take offs and landings. I was in seventh heaven. Sad but true!

DUB is such a busy airport!

I live near Stansted and find PlaneFinder quite dull really -- it's nearly all Ryanair
Perhaps you should move here to cure your addiction, OP?

House is not on the market, no, no, not at all
But a little while back we spent a few months near Biarritz, SW France and it seems to be on a major flight path from Northern Europe to Africa, Southern Spain/Portugal/Canaries, South America and other transatlantic routes. Plane Finder was quite good then....

@lionallmessy

have you seen homeland ?? suspicious thoughts haha

We're in rural Gloucestershire but seem to be on the flightpath into Birmingham in the evenings..... I love looking at what's going overhead as you can hear they are descending. DH said it's the weirdest hobby ever .

Right you complete swine! I have just wasted an hour of my extremely valuable time on that Geoguesser

I live in the middle of nowhere in a western state and enjoy seeing where planes are coming and going from. The flights from Heathrow, Paris and Frankfort going to San Fransisco go over us at about 35,000 feet.

Another thing I enjoy is a scanner. I could hear every from the local road maintenance crews, fire/police to pilots in the cock pit. It was very entertaining and even humorous at times, although I heard a pilot saying he'd lost engine number three, needed a long runway and was requesting emergency crews to stand by. Never saw anything on the news. One of the guys at a flight control center, when he was passing a flight off to another flight center, would say goodbye in their language. He would say “cheerio” to the BA (speed bird) pilots.

The Geoguessr monuments and London maps are the best.
Some wonders of the world I can now not bother going to, others I'd never heard of look ace!
You can usually see a street sign in London, but I swear half of it is a building site!

This thread was not meant to ENCOURAGE people dammit. I was expecting a chorus of Yabu you boring bastard. Not encouragement dammit

@TressiliansStone it certainly does identify the Battle of Britain flight planes 😀. If you know where they're taking off from (normally Brize or Conningsby) you can track them from takeoff. It will be really cool for the flypast on Sunday as you can track them out to the sea, watch them form up and then zoom in to see them fly in formation over London

This Sunday, you say, madvixen? Fantastic!

If you go to the airport on Flightradar24 you can see the ground vehicles as well.

just had a small plane go paST but wasnt on FR maybe not all are

Op cant believe you have not used lightening tracker. You can set it so when there is a strike you can see the sound wave ripple across the map. You are in for a treat.