I have always enjoyed tracking friends and family as they fly around. Until last week, my favorite had been aeroseek. Then, I found what has to be one of the coolest aviation tools ever. I've wasted hours playing with the site.
I did a search here on FT, and someone else also found it last month. Thought I'd provide a link for those who have never visited the travel technology forum (I never heard of it before this search).
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...42#post5015242

Among the MANY great tools, you can search every CO plane currently in the air, by aircraft type (although only a few types are shown on the homepage, just pick anything, then on the next screen for aircraft type, try something like B77* or B74*, etc). Or you can do an airport search and see every inbound and outbound plane out of that airport. If you search for a specific flight, you can even get minute by minute listing of lat/lon and altitude by clicking the 'en route' link next to status - and if you click on the map, a larger version opens up with real-time tracking. Site claims to have ~6 minute delay from real-time. If you click on the map on the home page, you can even see an animated gif of all todays flights. The one thing I haven't figured out yet is if and how to get tail/registration numbers. Lots more... have fun..

Very cool. I actually just recently was pointed to this as well, to watch all the diverted flights from from MDW after then WN accident. It's nice to have the homepage now, and to see that you can limit by aircraft

Is this actually possible? I spotted this website a couple of weeks ago and one of the first things I tried to do was see every NW plane in the air but could find no way to do it. That would be much more interesting to me than seeing every 74* in the air or something like that...

I'm still exploring, but as far as I know so far, it's by type
Someone in the technology forum said this was just a beta release - so there'll probably be more functionality later. Wouldn't surprise me if it also had a subscription fee. Also, I haven't yet done the free registration - not sure what if any additional features that adds.

It is no longer beta. And I signed up right after the other threads appear, so they upgraded me to a "charter member". All free. Nice.

One major thing that's different after you sign up is that if you search for a particular flight number, you will have data (departure and arrival times) for like 3-4 months, instead of a like couple of weeks.

Flightaware Is Worse Than Crack Cocaine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've tried it, and it's a wealth of info, but it looks like most flights around my home airport (GSP) are overflights. How do you tell on the map, which ones are actually coming to/leaving from a particular airport? Also, is there a way to tell where the overflying flights are coming from/going to? Thanks.

gsupstate - The ICAO code for Greenville-Spartansburg is KGSP. Type that into the search box at upper right, and you'll get all recent departures/arrivals and flights enroute to GSP.

Flights in blue are one and green the other. Or vis a versa.

Cool. Thanks!

The small map that comes up when you type in the airport code is clickable - and you get a nice large map. Blue lines are coming and going (can't distinguish which except by looking at the direction of the line), and green are just flights transiting the airspace. The map rather randomly gives details for some, but not all of the flights - too bad each individual line (flight) on the map isn't clickable. BTW, this map will also update in near real-time. There also a link to see flights nationwide coming and going to your specified airport, and these are color coded for inbound/outbound; however map doesn't seem to be clickable, so you only get the small version for nationwide plot. Kind of interesting looking at MEM and SDF and seeing all the FEDEX/UPS craft to and from Alaska.

Is the Tail Number designation good only for private a/c? I'd love to be able to search for TN for CO flights. Anyone have any luck with this?

I read on the FAQ's that this will be a future "enhancement" but it's not working yet for commercial.

That would probably be hard to do. They are getting their data from flight plans filed with ATC. Commercial flights file by flight number (i.e. COA051) whereas private aircraft most often file by tail number.