EHAM · AMS · Amsterdam, North Holland
Planes near AMS: live flight tracking at Amsterdam Schiphol
Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS / EHAM) serves Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands. Built on reclaimed land below sea level, with unusually widely spread runways.
The live map
Aircraft the volunteer receiver network can currently hear around Amsterdam. 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 AMS, 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 AMS. 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 27
| Flight | From | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KLM856B789 · PH-BHI | SeoulRKSI / ICN | 5,000 ft | 260 kt | 18 nmNNW of the field |
| MPH8342B744 · PH-CKA | NairobiHKJK / NBO | 13,700 ft | 309 kt | 32 nmSW of the field |
| KLM642B78X · PH-BKA | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 10,025 ft | 389 kt | 37 nmNW of the field |
| DAL256A339 · N416DX | BostonKBOS / BOS | 12,950 ft | 404 kt | 47 nmWNW of the field |
| KLM204B78X · PH-BKM | TorontoCYYZ / YYZ | 37,425 ft | 524 kt | 156 nmWNW of the field |
| BCS21GA306 · D-AEAR | SchkeuditzEDDP / LEJ | 32,000 ft | 440 kt | 157 nmE of the field |
| DAL132A359 · N568DZ | DetroitKDTW / DTW | 40,000 ft | 537 kt | 216 nmWNW of the field |
| DAL70A359 · N574DZ | AtlantaKATL / ATL | 39,000 ft | 530 kt | 315 nmWNW of the field |
| KLM250B789 · PH-BHL | MinneapolisKMSP / MSP | 40,975 ft | 524 kt | 317 nmWNW of the field |
| KLM296B78X · PH-BKG | DullesKIAD / IAD | 38,975 ft | 525 kt | 606 nmWNW of the field |
| SIA324B77W · 9V-SWJ | SingaporeWSSS / SIN | 36,000 ft | 470 kt | 740 nmESE of the field |
| KLM174B78X · PH-BKI | NairobiHKJK / NBO | 38,000 ft | 440 kt | 1,021 nmSE of the field |
| ETD43A21N · A6-LRH | Abu DhabiOMAA / AUH | 34,000 ft | 414 kt | 1,584 nmSE of the field |
| KLM616B78X · PH-BKS | PortlandKPDX / PDX | 35,000 ft | 0 kt | 1,699 nmNW of the field |
| UAE145B77W · A6-EGE | DubaiOMDB / DXB | 32,000 ft | 478 kt | 1,835 nmSE of the field |
| KLM872B78X · PH-BKH | New DelhiVIDP / DEL | 33,975 ft | 455 kt | 1,973 nmE of the field |
| KLM602B78X · PH-BKL | Los AngelesKLAX / LAX | 37,000 ft | 0 kt | 2,123 nmNW of the field |
| KLM644B78X · PH-BKR | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 37,000 ft | 592 kt | 2,601 nmWNW of the field |
| GTI8153B744 · N452PA | AlmatyUAAA / ALA | 6,700 ft | 280 kt | 2,832 nmENE of the field |
| KLM100A333 · PH-AKA | TorontoCYYZ / YYZ | 37,000 ft | 550 kt | 2,850 nmWNW of the field |
Outbound 3 aircraft
| Flight | To | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRA37BB738 · PH-HSF | FaroLPFR / FAO | on the ground | 2 kt | 0 nmE of the field |
| KQA117B788 · 5Y-KZG | NairobiHKJK / NBO | 40,975 ft | 470 kt | 3,429 nmSE of the field |
| EJM222GLF5 · N223A | Farnborough, HampshireEGLF / FAB | 18,025 ft | 397 kt | 3,590 nmWNW of the field |
About Amsterdam Schiphol
- ICAO codeEHAM
- IATA codeAMS
- ServesAmsterdam
- RegionNorth Holland, Netherlands
- Coordinates52.309°N, 4.764°E
Schiphol sits southwest of Amsterdam on a drained lake bed, below sea level. Its runways are spread further apart than at almost any comparable airport, which produces approach and departure paths that fan out over a wide area rather than converging tightly on one point. Which combination is in use changes frequently, driven partly by noise rules.
Because the runway configuration changes often, the map here looks different from one visit to the next in a way that most airports do not. Watching for that is a good way to learn how much of an approach path is geography and how much is policy.
What the codes mean
Airports carry two identifiers and they are not interchangeable.
AMS 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.
EHAM is the ICAO code: four letters, used by air traffic
control, flight planning systems and trackers like this one. Its first
two letters, EH, marks
the Netherlands, 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 Amsterdam 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:
