Flight Aware

One of my favorite websites in FlightAware.com. It is a way to track flights. If you know the flight number, you can go that way. You can search by airport, or by airplane type and so on. What I like best is seeing what is above you. Am I the only person that does that?

I look up and see a contrail and wonder, "Where are they going?" On a grander scale, you know there are, depending on the type of plane, 50-400 people up there, each with their own story of why they are going somewhere. Maybe it is for work, maybe it is for a funeral, maybe to go on vacation. Everybody has got a story, and they are whizzing 6 miles over my head at 500MPH.

A while back I had a post a Facebook about some fun I had with searching planes. Normally, I see planes going east/west here in flyover country. Rarely you see planes with contrails going north/south. You will see planes going to MSP, but they are typically lower (if you watch enough, you can tell). But I saw some way up there. Turns out, for planes to Dallas and Houston from Europe and the Middle East, because of the winds aloft, is more efficient for them to go "up and over" the planet, and fly over Iowa. Seems odd, but a flight from Saudi Arabia to Houston is efficient flying over us. They don't have to fight headwinds as much. On the way back, Eastbound, they don't fly over us, because they can get a tailwind and fly more straight east.

So HERE is a link, to what is over us in Iowa. Scroll your mouse over a plane. It will say the

Carrier, flight number, and type of plane

How high they are and their speed in knots

Where they are from and where they are going

You might need to search the site for some of the lingo, but here is one about to fly over me as I post this

DAL 1854 A320, 340 397, KDTW KDEN

That means it is a Delta Airlines, Flight 1854, and an Airbus A320 (picture below), it is at 34000 feet, at 397 knots, flying from Detroit to Denver.

The icons for planes are kinda what they look like. You can see the "heavies". Those are the widebodies, like 767s and 747s. Fun stuff!