KSDF · SDF · Louisville, Kentucky
Planes near SDF: live flight tracking at Louisville Muhammad Ali International
Louisville Muhammad Ali International (SDF / KSDF) serves Louisville, Kentucky, United States. The other great overnight freight field, with the same inverted daily rhythm.
The live map
Aircraft the volunteer receiver network can currently hear around Louisville. 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 SDF, 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 SDF. 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 60
| Flight | From | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UPS1337B763 · N376UP | TampaKTPA / TPA | 8,225 ft | 276 kt | 27 nmSE of the field |
| UPS901B763 · N353UP | OntarioKONT / ONT | 11,950 ft | 340 kt | 37 nmSW of the field |
| UPS1291A306 · N174UP | ColumbiaKCAE / CAE | 10,925 ft | 312 kt | 39 nmSE of the field |
| UPS617B763 · N348UP | Chicago/RockfordKRFD / RFD | 12,825 ft | 356 kt | 40 nmWNW of the field |
| UPS733B763 · N341UP | Oklahoma CityKOKC / OKC | 14,875 ft | 359 kt | 44 nmSW of the field |
| UPS1329B763 · N916UP | OrlandoKMCO / MCO | 17,200 ft | 405 kt | 54 nmSE of the field |
| UPS1481A306 · N124UP | DetroitKDTW / DTW | 23,000 ft | 454 kt | 83 nmNE of the field |
| FRG1953E120 · N124HL | South BendKSBN / SBN | 21,000 ft | 306 kt | 99 nmN of the field |
| SNC1255SH36 · N688AN | BeaverKBKW / BKW | 7,825 ft | 200 kt | 117 nmE of the field |
| UPS1139B752 · N402UP | SyracuseKSYR / SYR | 30,775 ft | 481 kt | 121 nmNNE of the field |
| EDV5070CRJ7 · N340CA | MinneapolisKMSP / MSP | 29,000 ft | 461 kt | 142 nmNW of the field |
| UPS1219B763 · N385UP | DullesKIAD / IAD | 32,025 ft | 451 kt | 143 nmE of the field |
| AAL647A319 · N807AW | MiamiKMIA / MIA | 32,600 ft | 473 kt | 152 nmSE of the field |
| UPS1375A306 · N158UP | Knoxville/MaryvilleKTYS / TYS | 10,675 ft | 301 kt | 155 nmSSE of the field |
| SNC1259SH36 · N476RW | CharlestonKCRW / CRW | 6,250 ft | 157 kt | 181 nmE of the field |
| UPS1357B752 · N444UP | HuntsvilleKHSV / HSV | 20,550 ft | 395 kt | 192 nmS of the field |
| UPS1391B752 · N418UP | JacksonKJAN / JAN | 29,000 ft | 416 kt | 200 nmSSW of the field |
| UPS541A306 · N127UP | MilwaukeeKMKE / MKE | 21,975 ft | 458 kt | 201 nmNNW of the field |
| UPS1189B763 · N383UP | PhiladelphiaKPHL / PHL | 32,025 ft | 433 kt | 216 nmE of the field |
| UPS705B752 · N420UP | LafayetteKLFT / LFT | 31,000 ft | 461 kt | 239 nmSW of the field |
Outbound 9 aircraft
| Flight | To | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RPA3694E75L · N751YX | NewarkKEWR / EWR | 29,200 ft | 455 kt | 168 nmNW of the field |
| UAL1510B38M · N17336 | DenverKDEN / DEN | 37,000 ft | 505 kt | 231 nmNE of the field |
| SKW5603CRJ7 · N788SK | ChicagoKORD / ORD | on the ground | 0 kt | 250 nmNNW of the field |
| AAL1325A319 · N814AW | MiamiKMIA / MIA | 31,975 ft | 363 kt | 287 nmE of the field |
| MXY753BCS3 · N257BZ | Fort MyersKRSW / RSW | 39,550 ft | 452 kt | 549 nmSSE of the field |
| UPS72B748 · N615UP | AnchoragePANC / ANC | 40,000 ft | 437 kt | 2,522 nmNW of the field |
| AAL399A21N · N436AN | Dallas-Fort WorthKDFW / DFW | 15,375 ft | 295 kt | 2,680 nmNW of the field |
| UPS64B748 · N634UP | AnchoragePANC / ANC | 40,000 ft | 477 kt | 5,873 nmNW of the field |
| UPS108B744 · N582UP | NaritaRJAA / NRT | 36,000 ft | 502 kt | 5,930 nmNNW of the field |
About Louisville Muhammad Ali International
- ICAO codeKSDF
- IATA codeSDF
- ServesLouisville
- RegionKentucky, United States
- Coordinates38.171°N, 85.735°W
Louisville Muhammad Ali International sits south of the city near the Ohio River. Like Memphis it is built around an overnight parcel operation, and like Memphis its busiest hours are the ones when most airports are empty. The aircraft mix leans heavily toward freighters, including types that no longer carry passengers anywhere.
The best time to watch is between midnight and dawn local time. Arrivals converge from across the continent within a narrow window, which is a genuinely striking thing to see played out on a map.
What the codes mean
Airports carry two identifiers and they are not interchangeable.
SDF 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.
KSDF is the ICAO code: four letters, used by air traffic
control, flight planning systems and trackers like this one. Its first
letter, K, marks
the contiguous United States, 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 Louisville 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:
