How to Read a Live Flight Tracker Map
A live flight tracker throws hundreds of moving icons at you at once. Once you know the visual language — icons, trails, colors — it becomes easy to read. Here's how to decode what you're seeing on FlyRadar.
The aircraft icons
Each icon is an aircraft, drawn pointing in its actual direction of travel (its track). The icon shape reflects the aircraft category — airliners, regional jets, props, helicopters, and gliders all get distinct silhouettes, so you can tell at a glance whether that dot over your city is a widebody or a Cessna.
The rings: how the position was found
Selected aircraft show a colored ring indicating the position technology — ADS-B, MLAT, FLARM or TIS-B. This tells you the position's source and rough accuracy. The full breakdown is in position sources explained.
Trails: where it's been
Click an aircraft and a trail appears behind it — its recent track across the map. Trail segments are colored by altitude: watch an airliner after departure and you'll see the trail shift through the color range as it climbs to cruise, then descend again on approach. A sudden end to a trail usually means the aircraft dropped out of receiver coverage, not that anything happened to it.
The info panel: callsigns, routes and data
Selecting an aircraft opens its details:
- Callsign — the flight's radio identifier (e.g., BAW15 for British Airways flight 15)
- Route — origin and destination airports, when known
- Altitude — in feet; airliners cruise at 30,000–43,000 ft ("FL300–FL430")
- Ground speed — speed over the ground, not through the air; strong headwinds can slow a jet to surprisingly low numbers
- Vertical rate — climb or descent in feet per minute
- Squawk — a 4-digit transponder code; 7700 is an emergency, 7600 is radio failure, 7500 is unlawful interference
Airport boards
Click an airport marker to open its live arrival and departure board — the same information the terminal displays show, driven by the traffic actually approaching and departing. Browse our airport directory for direct links to the busiest fields.
The overlay layers
FlyRadar is more than aircraft. The layer controls add:
- Weather radar — precipitation; great for seeing why flights are deviating
- Wind — animated wind flow, which explains cruising speeds and routing
- Marine traffic — AIS vessel positions on the same map (see how ship tracking works)
- Lightning — live strike detection from the Blitzortung network
Reading a busy sky
Try this: zoom into the English Channel or the US East Coast at midday. The parallel lines of traffic you see aren't random — they're organized airway corridors and oceanic track systems. Morning in Europe means a wave of eastbound arrivals over the Atlantic; evening reverses it westbound. After a few minutes, the invisible structure of global airspace becomes obvious.
Ready? Open the live map and try clicking a few aircraft.