LEMD · MAD · Madrid, Community of Madrid
Planes near MAD: live flight tracking at Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suárez
Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suárez (MAD / LEMD) serves Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain. High on the central Spanish plateau, and the main European doorway to Latin America.
The live map
Aircraft the volunteer receiver network can currently hear around Madrid. 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 MAD, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02:55 UTC | Departure | SWT180 | A321 · EC-OTU |
| 02:49 UTC | Arrival | BCS7CK | A306 · D-AZMP |
| 02:39 UTC | Arrival | IBE0156 | A359 · EC-MYX |
| 02:22 UTC | Arrival | AEA176 | B789 · EC-NGS |
4 movements in the current recording 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 MAD. 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 20 aircraft
| Flight | From | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BCS7CKA306 · D-AZMP | Ferno (VA)LIMC / MXP | on the ground | 24 kt | 2 nmS of the field |
| IBE5102A359 · EC-NDR | Buenos Aires (Ezeiza)SAEZ / EZE | 2,750 ft | 146 kt | 5 nmSE of the field |
| AAL748B772 · N778AN | CharlotteKCLT / CLT | 4,400 ft | 177 kt | 10 nmSE of the field |
| AAL94B772 · N790AN | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 18,300 ft | 422 kt | 35 nmW of the field |
| IBE3268A333 · EC-LUK | São PauloSBGR / GRU | 11,150 ft | 313 kt | 36 nmSSW of the field |
| BCS8462B752 · OE-LNA | SchkeuditzEDDP / LEJ | 33,500 ft | 462 kt | 104 nmENE of the field |
| DAL62A333 · N801NW | BostonKBOS / BOS | 39,000 ft | 520 kt | 343 nmWNW of the field |
| AEA35SYB38M · EC-OTA | Spata-ArtemidaLGAV / ATH | 39,000 ft | 415 kt | 392 nmE of the field |
| IBE6118A359 · EC-OES | SantiagoSCEL / SCL | 40,000 ft | 474 kt | 667 nmSW of the field |
| BCS3WPB752 · EC-KLD | BarcelonaLEBL / BCN | 22,075 ft | 397 kt | 698 nmN of the field |
| BCS10KA306 · D-AEAC | SchkeuditzEDDP / LEJ | 33,025 ft | 396 kt | 698 nmNE of the field |
| CCA898B789 · B-1591 | São PauloSBGR / GRU | 34,975 ft | 529 kt | 1,034 nmNE of the field |
| QTR1EB789 · A7-BHJ | DohaOTHH / DOH | 38,000 ft | 465 kt | 1,246 nmE of the field |
| ETD5H3B789 · A6-BLM | Abu DhabiOMAA / AUH | 36,000 ft | 471 kt | 1,305 nmE of the field |
| ARG1134A332 · LV-FVH | Buenos Aires (Ezeiza)SAEZ / EZE | 39,000 ft | 488 kt | 1,761 nmSW of the field |
| IBE03ZDA332 · EC-MLB | BostonKBOS / BOS | on the ground | 6 kt | 2,955 nmWNW of the field |
| JBU2261A21N · N4074J | BostonKBOS / BOS | 4,150 ft | 264 kt | 2,961 nmWNW of the field |
| TAM8076B789 · CC-BMB | São PauloSBGR / GRU | 37,000 ft | 496 kt | 3,580 nmSW of the field |
| IBE03LWA333 · EC-LZJ | MiamiKMIA / MIA | 1,375 ft | 171 kt | 3,835 nmWNW of the field |
| IBE5108A359 · EC-OAY | Buenos Aires (Ezeiza)SAEZ / EZE | 37,000 ft | 551 kt | 4,375 nmSW of the field |
Outbound 6 aircraft
| Flight | To | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SWT101AT75 · EC-MKE | Palma de MallorcaLEPA / PMI | 20,000 ft | 277 kt | 193 nmESE of the field |
| ETH740B789 · ET-AUQ | PortoLPPR / OPO | 39,975 ft | 450 kt | 411 nmESE of the field |
| AEG472SF34 · ES-LSB | RheinmünsterEDSB / FKB | 18,000 ft | 240 kt | 479 nmNE of the field |
| AEE3EMA21N · SX-NAE | Spata-ArtemidaLGAV / ATH | on the ground | 28 kt | 1,284 nmE of the field |
| IBE5103A359 · EC-NXE | Buenos Aires (Ezeiza)SAEZ / EZE | 36,000 ft | 495 kt | 1,949 nmSW of the field |
| UAE144A359 · A6-EXQ | DubaiOMDB / DXB | 41,000 ft | 476 kt | 3,047 nmE of the field |
About Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suárez
- ICAO codeLEMD
- IATA codeMAD
- ServesMadrid
- RegionCommunity of Madrid, Spain
- Coordinates40.493°N, 3.572°W
Madrid-Barajas sits northeast of the city on the Meseta, the high central plateau of Spain, which puts it at a noticeably greater elevation than most European hubs. Its distinctive role is as the principal bridge between Europe and Latin America, so the long-haul destinations here run heavily southwest across the Atlantic rather than east or north.
The late-morning bank of departures for the Americas is the pattern to look for. Aircraft leave within a relatively short window and track out over Portugal and the Atlantic together before spreading apart.
What the codes mean
Airports carry two identifiers and they are not interchangeable.
MAD 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.
LEMD is the ICAO code: four letters, used by air traffic
control, flight planning systems and trackers like this one. Its first
two letters, LE, marks
Spain, 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 Madrid 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:
