playbooks / aircraft-tracking

Aircraft → owner and movements

Identify who owns an aircraft from its tail number and reconstruct where it has flown, including flights hidden from commercial trackers.

start: ✈ aircraftyields: company, real name, locationlevel: beginner

1. 01

   Identify the airframe

   Look up the registration (tail number) to get the ICAO 24-bit hex code, the model and the registered owner. Many private jets are registered to trusts or LLCs, so take the owner name into the company playbook.

   • FAA Aircraft Registryfreedatasetdetails

   → can yield: ▤Company ☺Real name

2. 02

   Live and recent tracks

   ADS-B Exchange doesn't honour the LADD/PIA blocking lists that commercial trackers filter on, so it shows aircraft that Flightradar24 and FlightAware hide.

   • ADS-B Exchangefreemiumapidetails
   • Flightradar24freemiumacct optionalapimobiledetails
   • FlightAwarefreemiumacct optionalapimobiledetails

   → can yield: ⊕Location

3. 03

   Historical flight data

   For patterns over months, such as regular destinations or overnight stays, query historical state vectors.

   • OpenSky Networkfreeacct optionalapidatasetdetails
   • ADS-B Exchangefreemiumapidetails

   → can yield: ⊕Location