LSZH · ZRH · Zurich, Zurich
Planes near ZRH: live flight tracking at Zurich Airport
Zurich Airport (ZRH / LSZH) serves Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. A field whose runway use changes through the day for reasons that are entirely political.
The live map
Aircraft the volunteer receiver network can currently hear around Zurich. 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 ZRH, 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 ZRH. 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 18 aircraft
| Flight | From | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EDW25GA320 · HB-IHZ | Ponta DelgadaLPPD / PDL | 36,000 ft | 451 kt | 442 nmWSW of the field |
| ETH736A359 · ET-AUA | Ferno (VA)LIMC / MXP | 38,000 ft | 468 kt | 443 nmSSE of the field |
| SWR1845BCS3 · HB-JCD | Spata-ArtemidaLGAV / ATH | 36,000 ft | 389 kt | 449 nmESE of the field |
| SWR2WZBCS3 · YL-BTB | VilniusEYVI / VNO | 36,000 ft | 378 kt | 467 nmNE of the field |
| SWR81A333 · HB-JHJ | TorontoCYYZ / YYZ | 37,000 ft | 527 kt | 493 nmWNW of the field |
| SWR155A333 · HB-JHH | MumbaiVABB / BOM | 38,000 ft | 434 kt | 504 nmE of the field |
| SWR139B77W · HB-JNG | Hong KongVHHH / HKG | 36,000 ft | 463 kt | 573 nmE of the field |
| SWR2069BCS3 · HB-JCN | PortoLPPR / OPO | 36,000 ft | 451 kt | 589 nmW of the field |
| CPA383A359 · B-LQH | Hong KongVHHH / HKG | 40,000 ft | 477 kt | 979 nmE of the field |
| ETD6A8A21N · A6-LRI | Abu DhabiOMAA / AUH | 32,000 ft | 434 kt | 1,487 nmSE of the field |
| DAL52B764 · N835MH | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 35,000 ft | 525 kt | 2,397 nmWNW of the field |
| SWR2KA333 · HB-JHD | DullesKIAD / IAD | 39,000 ft | 539 kt | 2,437 nmWNW of the field |
| SWR9GB77W · HB-JNI | ChicagoKORD / ORD | 36,000 ft | 579 kt | 2,761 nmWNW of the field |
| SWR15XA333 · HB-JHI | New YorkKJFK / JFK | 36,000 ft | 558 kt | 2,804 nmWNW of the field |
| UAL134B763 · N677UA | NewarkKEWR / EWR | 19,975 ft | 441 kt | 3,373 nmWNW of the field |
| KAL917B78X · HL8573 | SeoulRKSI / ICN | 23,600 ft | 426 kt | 4,662 nmNE of the field |
| SWR39B77W · HB-JNH | San FranciscoKSFO / SFO | 0 ft | 80 kt | 5,063 nmNW of the field |
| SWR41GB77W · HB-JNA | Los AngelesKLAX / LAX | on the ground | 0 kt | 5,148 nmNW of the field |
Outbound 5 aircraft
| Flight | To | Altitude | Ground speed | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| THY6419A332 · TC-JDO | IstanbulLTFM / IST | 38,000 ft | 442 kt | 345 nmE of the field |
| UAE8TB77W · A6-EPD | DubaiOMDB / DXB | on the ground | 89 kt | 2,575 nmESE of the field |
| ETD142A21N · A6-LRK | Abu DhabiOMAA / AUH | 33,000 ft | 472 kt | 2,645 nmESE of the field |
| AIC152B788 · VT-ANO | New DelhiVIDP / DEL | 41,000 ft | 464 kt | 3,004 nmE of the field |
| SWR180B77W · HB-JND | BangkokVTBS / BKK | 7,825 ft | 277 kt | 4,868 nmE of the field |
About Zurich Airport
- ICAO codeLSZH
- IATA codeZRH
- ServesZurich
- RegionZurich, Switzerland
- Coordinates47.458°N, 8.548°E
Zurich sits north of the city, close to the German border, in gently rolling country with the Alps further south. Its operating pattern is unusually complicated because cross-border noise agreements restrict which directions can be used at which hours, so the configuration changes during the day in ways that have nothing to do with the wind.
If the approach direction here looks wrong for the weather, it probably is, and the reason is a treaty rather than a meteorologist. Few airports illustrate as clearly that flight paths are negotiated as much as they are flown.
What the codes mean
Airports carry two identifiers and they are not interchangeable.
ZRH 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.
LSZH is the ICAO code: four letters, used by air traffic
control, flight planning systems and trackers like this one. Its first
two letters, LS, marks
Switzerland, 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 Zurich 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:
