EDDF · FRA · Frankfurt am Main, Hesse
Planes near FRA: live flight tracking at Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport (FRA / EDDF) serves Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany. A central European crossroads with as much freight as passenger traffic overhead.
The live map
Aircraft the volunteer receiver network can currently hear around Frankfurt am Main. The frame is fixed on the field; tap or click an aircraft to open its full details.
Nothing here is filtered. Military aircraft, aircraft in the FAA's LADD privacy programme and aircraft using temporary addresses all appear the same way anything else does. Open the full map to pan, zoom and switch layers.
Movements we watched happen
Snapshot written . This page refreshes by itself while it is open.
These are transitions the receiver network actually observed at FRA, each with the time it was seen. Nothing here is guessed from a timetable.
Why there may be fewer departures than arrivals
A departure is only counted once a receiver has seen the aircraft on the ground here first. That guard stops us inventing takeoffs for aircraft that merely flew overhead, and it costs us real ones: hearing an aircraft sitting on an airport surface needs a receiver with line of sight to that surface, which is the hardest reception there is. An arrival only needs the aircraft to have been seen airborne, and airborne coverage is very good.
So at any airport without a clear view of the ground, this list will show fewer departures than actually happened. If you see more arrivals than departures below, read that as a fact about where the antennas are, not about the airport.
| Time | Movement | Flight | Aircraft |
|---|---|---|---|
| No movements have been watched here in the current recording window. This list fills continuously, and a short one usually means quiet hours or a thin view of the airport surface rather than an empty airport. | |||
Nothing recorded here yet in the current window.
What appears to be inbound and outbound right now
Where the aircraft in range right now are most likely heading, worked out from their callsigns rather than watched happening.
How this list is built
We take the aircraft the receiver network can currently hear, read the callsign each one is broadcasting, and look that callsign up in an index of the routes it has actually flown before. An entry means this callsign's most commonly observed route ends at FRA. That is a good guide to where a flight is going. It is not a flight plan: nobody has told us today's routing, and we would rather say that than dress an inference up as a schedule.
The consequences are worth knowing. A diversion or an unusual routing will be listed wrong. A charter, a positioning leg, or any flight the index has not seen before is missing entirely. You will occasionally see an aircraft here sitting on the ground on the far side of a continent, which is the method showing its working rather than hiding it. There are no scheduled times or arrival estimates on this page because neither can be computed honestly from what we hold.
For gates, delays and cancellations the airline and the airport are authoritative. This page is for what is actually in the air.
Inbound nearest 20 of 42
| Flight | From | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RZO564A20N · CS-TSK | Ponta DelgadaLPPD / PDL | 1,975 ft | 139 kt | 6 nmENE of the field |
| DLH417A346 · D-AIHZ | DullesKIAD / IAD | 3,175 ft | 171 kt | 10 nmENE of the field |
| BCS186A306 · D-AZMK | SchkeuditzEDDP / LEJ | 4,875 ft | 175 kt | 13 nmENE of the field |
| DLH1319A21N · D-AIEP | AlgiersDAAG / ALG | 4,975 ft | 174 kt | 17 nmENE of the field |
| BOX617B77L · D-AERB | Los AngelesKLAX / LAX | 8,300 ft | 305 kt | 20 nmNE of the field |
| GEC8347B77L · D-ALFC | IstanbulLTFM / IST | 6,500 ft | 228 kt | 21 nmENE of the field |
| ANA203B789 · JA892A | TokyoRJTT / HND | 6,850 ft | 220 kt | 26 nmENE of the field |
| OCN5QA320 · D-AIWI | LarnacaLCLK / LCA | 10,675 ft | 257 kt | 33 nmESE of the field |
| DLH577B789 · D-ABPT | Cape TownFACT / CPT | 13,150 ft | 276 kt | 41 nmESE of the field |
| DLH847A21N · D-AIOA | ReykjavíkBIKF / KEF | 37,025 ft | 483 kt | 161 nmNW of the field |
| CFG2361A339 · D-ANRE | BangkokVTBS / BKK | 38,000 ft | 434 kt | 209 nmESE of the field |
| DLH409A333 · D-AIKN | Raleigh/DurhamKRDU / RDU | 39,000 ft | 516 kt | 232 nmWNW of the field |
| DLH443B789 · D-ABPC | DetroitKDTW / DTW | 36,975 ft | 561 kt | 270 nmWNW of the field |
| DLH401A346 · D-AIHW | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 39,025 ft | 509 kt | 289 nmWNW of the field |
| ICE524B38M · TF-ICE | ReykjavíkBIKF / KEF | 37,000 ft | 484 kt | 301 nmNW of the field |
| DLH591B789 · D-ABPP | NairobiHKJK / NBO | 37,975 ft | 479 kt | 399 nmSE of the field |
| THA920B77W · HS-TKO | BangkokVTBS / BKK | 36,000 ft | 447 kt | 402 nmESE of the field |
| ACA844A333 · C-GFAJ | MontréalCYUL / YUL | 37,000 ft | 517 kt | 413 nmWNW of the field |
| SXS8GLB738 · TC-SEZ | TrabzonLTCG / TZX | 38,000 ft | 412 kt | 451 nmESE of the field |
| CCA771B77W · B-2037 | ShenzhenZGSZ / SZX | 35,975 ft | 418 kt | 467 nmNE of the field |
Outbound 10 aircraft
| Flight | To | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DLH576B789 · D-ABPR | Cape TownFACT / CPT | 35,000 ft | 514 kt | 2,940 nmS of the field |
| AIC2030B789 · VT-TSE | New DelhiVIDP / DEL | 40,975 ft | 472 kt | 3,053 nmE of the field |
| DLH780B744 · D-ABVW | SingaporeWSSS / SIN | 37,000 ft | 497 kt | 3,177 nmE of the field |
| GEC8160B77L · D-ALFJ | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 3,600 ft | 162 kt | 3,337 nmWNW of the field |
| BOX456B77L · D-AALM | AtlantaKATL / ATL | 34,000 ft | 518 kt | 3,449 nmWNW of the field |
| THA923B77W · HS-TKQ | BangkokVTBS / BKK | 37,000 ft | 490 kt | 3,517 nmE of the field |
| DLH432A343 · D-AIGV | ChicagoKORD / ORD | on the ground | 0 kt | 3,764 nmNW of the field |
| CFG2362A339 · D-ANRA | BangkokVTBS / BKK | 41,000 ft | 462 kt | 3,832 nmE of the field |
| BOX478B77L · D-AALD | Los AngelesKLAX / LAX | 34,000 ft | 453 kt | 4,410 nmNW of the field |
| UAL927B789 · N45956 | San FranciscoKSFO / SFO | 25,475 ft | 398 kt | 4,897 nmNW of the field |
About Frankfurt Airport
- ICAO codeEDDF
- IATA codeFRA
- ServesFrankfurt am Main
- RegionHesse, Germany
- Coordinates50.027°N, 8.558°E
Frankfurt sits southwest of the city in the Rhine-Main lowlands, surrounded by forest. Its position near the centre of Europe makes it a hub in the fullest sense: connecting traffic in every direction, a very large freight operation, and a constant stream of overflights that have no intention of landing. The airspace above central Germany is among the busiest in the world.
Turn the map out to cover Germany and the Low Countries. The density of high-level traffic that is simply passing through dwarfs what any single airport contributes, and that is the clearest picture of European airspace you can get in one screen.
What the codes mean
Airports carry two identifiers and they are not interchangeable.
FRA is the IATA code: three letters, the one printed on a
boarding pass and a baggage tag, assigned for commercial purposes and reused across
the world without any geographic logic.
EDDF is the ICAO code: four letters, used by air traffic
control, flight planning systems and trackers like this one. Its first
two letters, ED, marks
Germany, because ICAO allocates the code space by region.
The callsigns in the lists above are a third thing again. A callsign is what the crew typed into the transponder for this leg, so it changes flight by flight, while the registration and the 24-bit hex address stay with the airframe. When a callsign and a registration disagree, the registration is usually the more reliable of the two.
How to read the numbers
Altitude is pressure altitude, which is what the aircraft's air data system reads with a standard pressure setting. It is not height above the ground and it is not always the altitude the crew is flying to. Near Frankfurt am Main that gap is most obvious on approach, when a tracker can show a figure that does not match what is on the flight deck.
Ground speed is speed across the earth, not through the air. A strong tailwind can add a hundred knots or more to it without the aircraft flying any faster, which is why two aircraft at the same level going opposite ways can show wildly different numbers. Track is the direction of travel over the ground, which is not the direction the nose is pointing when there is any crosswind at all.
Aircraft go missing from this map for reasons that have nothing to do with the aircraft. Reception is line of sight, so terrain and distance cut it off abruptly; a good deal of light aviation in the United States broadcasts on 978 MHz rather than 1090 MHz; and plenty of aircraft, including gliders and older light types, carry no ADS-B at all and are not required to. How ADS-B works covers all of that properly.
Other airports on the map
The nearest fields with their own live page:
