When will ADSB data be available to public?

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

So I am a contributor and also using FlightAware to track my own aircraft via ADS-B.

If I am logged in, I can see the flights of my aircraft that FA has tracked via ADS-B (because it am feeding data). However if I give the tracking URL to someone else, all that comes up are the IFR flights.

As the aircraft owner, is there any way I can open this up for public viewing? Does FA plan to make this available to everyone at some point?

2

ADS-B data is freely available on the web site right now. However, position-only flight tracking (where we derive the flight plan from positions) isn’t yet. Are you looking to share access to those position-only (e.g., VFR) flights?

3

Yes, exactly.

4

What if I were to file an IFR flight plan, but never pick up the clearance (just fly it VFR). Would it show up publically then (assuming I have ADS-B 1090 out)?

–Dan

5

Yes, that’s a good work-around. We don’t have a timeframe just yet on publicly accessible position-only flight tracking; it’s really a can of worms on the data quality side.

6

I suppose you could make it optional with disclaimers…

So, if I never open my IFR flight plan, and it times out of the FAA’s system, will the position only flight disappear from the tracking page?

7

No, it’ll work fine if you depart reasonably on time.

8

But isn’t the data still from the same ADS-B receivers if a flight plan is filed, vs not?
It’s just the choice of displaying it, or not?

9

Yes, it’s the same data. The system decides if it should be displayed if it can correlate it to a flight plan from a known source.

If you just show every flight that we got an ADS-B or MLAT position for, you’d be overwhelmed by garbage.

10

What if you allowed any user (with an account) to opt-in to position-only data? Frankly, for our plane the position only data does not seem messy at all…

Dan

11

Two questions-

  1. If arriving (no flight plan) at an airport where there is not coverage to the ground, you get a notice that N12345 as arrived at lat/long, however this notice does not appear until an hour after the plane was last seen on ADSB. Is this correct?

  2. If there is an IFR flight plan, what happens if ATC deletes it before departure? What if they delete it after departure?

12

Unless we get ADS-B close to the surface, it’ll probably have a (?) next to the arrival time after ~15 minutes.

  1. If there is an IFR flight plan, what happens if ATC deletes it before departure? What if they delete it after departure?

I don’t think it will work if deleted pre-departure. After departure will probably be ignored.