Do you ever look up into the sky and wonder where the planes that you see are going? Well you can find out, with plane tracking software that’s freely available online.
Thanks to various iPhone apps and websites you can track the aircraft in our skies. There’s a lot of information available, including altitude data, speed, flightpath information, even whether there was a delay due to someone being off loaded.
Plane Tracking Websites
Try the iPhone app called ‘Plane Finder’ and the website www.flightradar24.com
Do you use any other plane tracking websites or apps? Why don’t you leave a comment at the bottom of this page and then we can all have a look.
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If you enjoy finding out what’s flying overhead, you might also want to know what’s sailing out at sea. There’s a similar tracker for ships and marine traffic, called Ship AIS.
Plane Trails… going where?
There’s a lot of activity in the sky over the Fylde Coast. Generally if you see an aircraft with 4 engines (look for 4 trails behind it) then it’s most likely bound for the USA or Canada. These flights are also more often than not originating from Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
Once you start checking the skies it can become addictive.
This Lancaster flew low over Cleveleys beach at the time of one of the big airshows – although it’s unlikely that this would appear on a plane tracker!
What Flies Overhead
It was one of the things that we noticed when we moved to the Fylde Coast many years ago – the amount of air traffic that there is here. It’s almost like having your own intermittent and ongoing Blackpool Air Show. Light aircraft and helicopters fly out of Blackpool Airport, then there are the dramatically noisy jets that shoot about in the air on training missions from BAE at Warton.
We’ve seen huge great big grey planes, flying so low overhead that you can practically see the whites of the pilots eyes. Helicopters of all shapes, sizes and colours, and of course don’t forget the frequent fly pasts from the Red Arrows. They all have us looking skywards to see that days show.
It was Barry Mills, a regular reader of Visit Cleveleys, who first told us about plane tracking. He said “I’ve long been interested in what flies above.. not the seagulls (although I prefer not to be underneath them) but the aircraft. Over many years, during a lazy summer’s day off. I’ve chilled out and watched the activity in the sky.. and there’s a lot of it!!
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