Live ATC Radar

Ok, so it's not the actual radar image the ATC guys get, but it's still pretty cool.

You can watch live radar of JFK airport traffic (as in flying traffic) in New York here...

Here's a JFK example - you can see the arrivals (blue planes) getting routed out over the Atlantic to circle and lose height, then coming back in to Kennedy "in trail".

Green aircraft are the departures. Anything else, isn't a JFK related aircraft (but most of those are for the adjacent La Guardia or Jersey airports)


LAX (Los Angeles) is also available, here...

Here's an LAX screenshot - lots of parallel-runway departures out over Santa Monica bay in green, and a great illustration of the routes they come in on for the parallel landing runways. Most flights from the East and South end up coming in over the East of the city, and getting lined up for one of the southerly two runways. Aircraft from the North and West (which means most flights from Europe) come in over Malibu and Santa Monica, and fly a U-turn just past LA city centre, to line up for the northerly runway.

So if live JFK and LAX radar doesn't satisfy your plane geek factor, why not hook up your audio with the accompanying ATC transmissions?

LAX tower is here, and JFK tower is here.