xMap data

Flights near airports

Flights near airports shows the aircraft near an airport, your places, an area or a point right now, from the live positions of the OpenSky Network: each with its callsign, the country it is registered in, its height, speed and heading, and whether it is on the ground, arriving, leaving or passing over. Or it counts the aircraft near each of your places.

In the editor: Aircraft near airports, places or a point right now, from the OpenSky Network’s live positions (receivers run by volunteers around the world): each with its callsign, the country it is registered in, its height, speed, heading and whether it is climbing, descending, on the ground or arriving or leaving; or each incoming place with how many aircraft are near it. Positions are a few seconds old; coverage is best over Europe and North America and thinner over oceans and parts of Africa and Asia.

Settings

Where

Pick one

Airports: pick from 38 of the world’s busiest. Each incoming place counts the aircraft around each place that reaches it (places close together share one search). Area of interest and A point look where you say. Up to 8 searches a run.

Pick up to 8 airports.

  • Airports
  • Each incoming place
  • Area of interest
  • A point

Airports

Pick one or more

Pick up to eight; each is searched in a square around it.

Pick from 38 choices.

Point (latitude, longitude)

Text

Within

Pick one

How far from each airport, place or point an aircraft counts, in a straight line.

How far from each airport, place or point an aircraft counts.

  • 10 km
  • 25 km
  • 50 km
  • 100 km

Show

Pick one

All aircraft, only those in the air, only those on the ground, or only low ones (under 3,000 m and not on the ground): mostly aircraft arriving or leaving.

Low means under 3,000 m and not on the ground: mostly aircraft arriving or leaving.

  • All aircraft
  • In the air
  • On the ground
  • Low, arriving or leaving (under 3,000 m)

Pass on

Pick one

Counts keep your places and add flights_nearby, flights_low, flights_on_ground and the nearest aircraft. The aircraft found pass on the aircraft themselves.

Your places go on, each with flights_nearby, flights_low, flights_on_ground and the nearest aircraft.

  • Each incoming place, with counts
  • The aircraft found

Most aircraft

A number

Up to 500 aircraft a run, the nearest first.

Up to 500 a run, the nearest first.

What comes out

Each item that leaves the block carries these fields, to use in the blocks after it as {{field}}.

Each aircraft, as an item

Airports, Area of interest, A point, or The aircraft found.

  • callsign, name, icao24: The flight’s callsign (its name here), and the aircraft’s own transponder code.
  • origin_country: The country the aircraft is registered in, not where it flies from.
  • altitude_m, speed_kmh, heading: Height in metres, ground speed in km/h, and the direction it is heading, in degrees from north.
  • phase, climb, on_ground: On the ground, Arriving, Leaving, Low or Cruising; Climbing, Descending or Level.
  • near, distance_km, lat, lng: The airport, place or area it was found near, how far, and where it is.
  • last_contact, link, source: When its position was last heard, its page on the OpenSky Network and the credit.

Each incoming place, with counts

Each incoming place, with counts.

  • flights_nearby, flights_low, flights_on_ground: How many aircraft are within the distance, how many are low, and how many are on the ground.
  • flights_nearest, flights_nearest_km: The nearest aircraft’s callsign and how far it is.

How to use it

Aviation

Hourly air traffic note for the operations centre

What is on the ground, arriving and leaving at Changi, in a short note every hour.

Security

Low aircraft near the stadium on match day

The control room hears about every low aircraft near a full stadium.

Hospitality

Arrivals for the hotel shuttle

An airport hotel in Toronto runs a shuttle to Pearson.

Before: The shuttle ran every half hour whatever the arrivals.

With the flow: The driver sees a wave of arrivals coming and adds a run.

Logistics

Busy hours at the cargo hub

A week of counts shows the hours the hub is busiest for trucks.

Real estate

Homes under the flight path

A buyer should know before the viewing, and so should the price.

Media

A plane overhead story

The desk hears about a low aircraft before readers ask.

Events

Arrivals before a congress

Public sector

Night flights for the noise office

The noise office keeps its own log of night arrivals and departures.

Good to know

  • For now the OpenSky Network does not accept requests from xMap’s servers (it blocks big cloud providers until it agrees), so the block gives sample aircraft, free and marked sample in every step and email, until it does.
  • Flight data from the OpenSky Network (opensky-network.org), run by a non-profit and fed by receivers that volunteers run around the world. Every result and email credits it.
  • Coverage is best over Europe and North America and thinner over oceans and parts of Africa and Asia: an aircraft out of reach of any receiver is not shown.
  • Positions are live and a few seconds old. A search is kept for a minute, so two flows asking about the same airport at the same moment share it.
  • origin_country is the country the aircraft is registered in. The callsign is the flight number most airlines use; where an airline uses its own, it may differ from the one on the departures board.
  • Some aircraft, such as some military or private ones, do not send their position, or ask for it to be hidden: they are not shown.

Works well with

  • Schedule: Starts the flow on a timetable.
  • Area of interest: Sets where the flow looks: countries, cities or specific places, or areas you draw on a map.
  • My data: Brings in a table you uploaded or a list you saved on the My data page: your stores, customers, target accounts or sites.
  • Filter: Keeps only the items that match a rule.
  • xMap LLM: Tell the AI what to do in plain words.
  • Show on a map: Shows the results as points on a map, with the area of interest.
  • Email: Sends one email per run with all the items, or one email per item.
  • Save to my database: Saves the items into a table of your own database (PostgreSQL, BigQuery or Snowflake): each field goes into the column of the same name, the others are left out.

Help articles

Try it

Build a flow with Flights near airports on the home page, no account needed, or book a call. Try it live