It would be great if the subject maps could auto update. I live near a Class Charlie airport and like to listen to approch control. Having the maps update and reducing the delay would be a big improvement.
Thanks for the great site. Keep it up.
Thanks
The airport and airport big map pages should auto-refresh every 5 minutes and 1.5 minutes, respectively.
Please keep in mind that you have to be logged in for auto-refresh to be enabled.
Hey Daniel, Semi related question: Why is there an approx 6 minute delay from real time on the radar displays? I’m guessing security, but that really wouldn’t make any difference. Even in real time, you couldn’t use it to launch a missle, etc.
When you have time can you give us a little bit of background on it. (I KNOW you have lot’s of free time! 
)… Bruce
Most of the 6 minute delay is a 5 minute delay built into our data feed by government bureaucracy.
I believe it was a post-9/11 knee-jerk reaction that never got corrected. I agree that it is pointless. We have the option of receiving a real-time (no delay) feed but a stipulation of receiving it is that we must put the delay in for most users, so we haven’t bothered with that.
Perhaps in the future we will lobby to have that decision reversed.
Most users?
Can we get a “LIVE rating” by submitting additional user information for security purposes?
That might be a possibility although we’d prefer to not waste everyone’s time and make the data publicly available. We’ll let you know.
As far as I know, if we received the live feed we would only be able to give you live data for aircraft that you owned. And we’d have to comply with various annual auditing requirements.
Thats actually pretty much the answer I was expecting. A 6 minute delay does as much for security as a TFR or ADIZ does. You just gotta love our taxes at work. Sometimes they do something great, like make the feed available in the first place, but then a bureaucrat shows their stupidity by thinking it should be delayed by 6 minutes, as if they think a terrorist can only plan 5 minutes into the future. But let’s not get off on that tangent!
If it will ever do any good I will be happy to help lobby to remove the delay. But then, it isn’t really that big of a thing so I’m sure it’s not the top priority around there. They whole system works really great in spite of the raw data having to come from the government!
Interesting bit of information, though. Thanks!