How to identify a flight overhead

FlightAware General
1

(as a Canuck, I apologize ahead of time if this is already answered or if its in the wrong forum, first time posting etc.)

I’m a infrequent passenger who likes to sit at a window seat, i.e. I know very little .

I’m in rural Sheenboro, QC, Canada (Coordinates: 45°58′N 77°14′W) and I see a fair amount of commercial flights overhead and very high up, due West in the late morning/afternoon and due East in the evening and into the late evening (EST).

I’m just curious, where are they probably coming from/going to?

How would I go about determining exactly which flight is passing overhead?
(edited, got compass points mixed up!)

2

Here is the flight track page for Petawawa Airport, which looks like it is close to your coordinates:

flightaware.com/live/airport/CYWA

Click on the Flight Tracker tab above the blue map.

You can zoom in and out on small map, or use the “multiple arrow” on the lower right to expand the map to its own window.

Have fun.

3

thanks! Very cool…

4

Check the FAQ’s for more info. Just remember what you see is slightly delayed. The airplane you see directly overhead may be ahead of what the map shows.

5

You might also look into
planeplotter.com
and
rtl1090.jetvision.de/
if you want to get further into seeing what is going overhead. You would need a USB Software Defined Radio (SDR) receiver that you can get on Amazon.com for about $25 us. The data is real time as opposed to Flightaware’s few minute delay.

If you become more interested, you can contribute to Flightaware data,
see flightaware.com/adsb/ for more information.

6

When you say the time is real time as opposed to flight aware, what does their software do? Is a site like Flight Aware?

7

Start with a good telescope and see if you can ID the plane by its registration letters.