Website to identify flight based on location/date/time?
 

I was thinking about this the other day and wondering, if I know the location, date, and time I saw a particular plane traveling across the sky, is there a way to find out what flight it was at a later date? I know I can view/track flights that are currently in the sky right now using many different websites, but what if I wanted to see what flights were in a certain area at a different time (I'm only talking about something a week ago...not data from years ago). Thanks!

One possibility is http://planefinder.net which has a historical playback feature -- if you click on the "playback" button in the upper right you can change the date within a 2 week range. They have data going back to I think 2011, and I'm certain the entire time period used to be available in playback, because I used it to look up some older international flights when I was filling in some gaps in my flight log last December, but I can't figure out a way to get past 2 weeks anymore, which is a pity.

They also have smartphone apps which may or may not have the same 2-week limitation.

Thanks for the reply! I can't seem to get to the historical data on planefinder.net. I see the link for "Historical Flight Data", and when I click on it, it brings up another page, but I don't seem to be able to search for historical data anywhere. What I really want to be able to do is center the map on a certain area, and then go back to a certain time period, and see what flights flew near there at that time.

Don't click on "Historical Flight Data" -- that's a red herring :)

Click on the playback button in the toolbar on the upper right:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f9cdbac76f.png

the dropdown menus let you change the date and time.

Ohhh, I see now! Thanks! Unfortunately I'm just too late, and the flight I was looking for is just over 2 weeks ago (2 weeks and 2 hours or so), so I can't find anything on the site. That's exactly what I was looking for, however! ^

I experimented just now and it seems setting the date backwards on the computer moves the selectable date window back correspondingly once you reload the page :p

I tried that as well, but if you change your computer date to 1 week ago, and then select a date on the website that's more than 2 weeks ago, it seems to skip forward to the date of your computer in order to replay the data...