What plane just flew over my house?
The rumble builds, peaks, fades. Somewhere over your roof, 150 people are eating pretzels at 400 mph — and you have no idea who they are or where they're going. Here's the part most people don't know: that plane is telling you, right now, in public. You just need something that listens.
Every airliner is broadcasting its identity in the clear
Since 2020, virtually every powered aircraft in US controlled airspace has been required to carry ADS-B Out — a transponder that broadcasts the aircraft's GPS position, altitude, speed, heading, and identity roughly once per second on 1090 MHz. It's not encrypted. It's not subscription data. It's a radio signal, and anyone with a $30 receiver can hear it.
Thousands of volunteers around the world run exactly those receivers and pool what they hear into open networks. That crowdsourced mesh is what powers WhatsAbove: when you enter your address, we ask the network for every aircraft within 10 to 50 nautical miles of that exact point, and paint them on a live radar scope — position, callsign, altitude, and speed, refreshed every few seconds.
Reading what you see
Click any aircraft on the scope and the telemetry card decodes it:
- Callsign — e.g.
DAL1082. Three-letter airline prefix + flight number. DAL is Delta, UAL United, AAL American, SWA Southwest, JBU JetBlue, FDX FedEx, UPS… UPS. A callsign likeN425TB(starting with N, no airline prefix) is a private aircraft flying under its registration. - Route — for most airline flights we can resolve the scheduled origin and destination, so you see
ATL → LGAand can say, with confidence, "that's the Atlanta flight." - Altitude — the single best clue to what a plane is doing (more below).
- Ground speed and vertical rate — a down-arrow means it's descending toward an airport near you; an up-arrow means it just left one.
- Squawk — a four-digit transponder code assigned by air traffic control. Almost always routine, but three codes (7500, 7600, 7700) signal emergencies. We flag those in red automatically. Full squawk guide here.
Altitude tells you the story
| Altitude | What's almost certainly happening |
|---|---|
| 0–3,000 ft | Taking off or on final approach — an airport is within ~10 miles |
| 3,000–10,000 ft | Climbing out or being sequenced for arrival, 10–40 miles from an airport |
| 10,000–18,000 ft | Mid climb/descent; also where turboprops and business jets cruise |
| 28,000–42,000 ft | Cruise. This flight is just passing over you and never thought about your town |
This is why the same house can hear two totally different kinds of traffic: low, loud arrivals following a published approach path, and the constant faint contrail traffic six miles up that only registers on quiet nights. If the low ones bother you, our flight-path noise explainer shows how to find the exact procedure being flown over your street.
Why some planes don't show up
Honesty matters here. The network you're seeing is crowdsourced: volunteers' antennas, mostly in populated areas. Three kinds of gaps exist:
- Coverage gaps. In remote areas, low-flying aircraft can slip under the radio horizon of the nearest receiver. High-altitude traffic is usually still visible because line-of-sight at 35,000 ft extends over 200 miles.
- Blocked aircraft. Some owners enroll in FAA privacy programs (LADD/PIA); military aircraft may broadcast nothing at all, or a limited signal without position.
- Helicopters and light GA. Some older or exempt aircraft only carry a basic transponder — visible to ATC radar, not always to the public mesh.
So: an empty scope means a quiet sky or quiet receivers. Over most US metro areas, coverage is excellent and effectively everything airline-sized is visible.
The overhead moment
WhatsAbove computes each aircraft's track and warns you when one is about to cross directly over your point — a chip appears: "overhead in 0:38." Step outside, look up, and the dot you're watching on screen resolves into the actual aircraft. It's a small thing, and it never stops being satisfying. At night, switch to the SPACE tab and the same trick works with the ISS — here's how.
Do it right now
Next time you hear that rumble: don't wonder. Type your address into the scope, watch the chevron crawl across your ring, click it, and read its story — callsign, route, altitude, speed, everything. The sky over your house is a public place, and now you can read it.
Frequently asked
Is it legal to look up which plane is flying over my house?
Yes. Aircraft broadcast their identity, position and altitude in the clear on 1090 MHz as a legal requirement (ADS-B). Receiving and republishing that signal is lawful in the US, and thousands of hobbyists feed public networks that anyone can view.
Why does one plane show up but the one I just saw doesn't?
Coverage is crowdsourced. If no volunteer receiver within roughly 100-200 miles heard the aircraft, it won't appear. Military aircraft and some private jets also block or limit their broadcasts.
What does the callsign like DAL1082 mean?
The first three letters are the airline's ICAO code (DAL = Delta Air Lines) and the numbers are the flight number. So DAL1082 is Delta flight 1082 — usually the same number you'd see on an airport departure board.