Airplanes.live

TJSJ · SJU · San Juan, Puerto Rico

Planes near SJU: live flight tracking at Luis Muñoz Marín International

Luis Muñoz Marín International (SJU / TJSJ) serves San Juan, Puerto Rico, United States. The Caribbean hub, where almost every arrival and departure is over water.

18.439°N, 66.002°W · snapshot written

The live map

Aircraft the volunteer receiver network can currently hear around San Juan. 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 SJU, 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.

Most recent first. Times are UTC. Recording is continuous, so a short list here means quiet hours or a thin view of the surface, not a quiet airport.
TimeMovement FlightAircraft
02:55 UTCArrivalJBU803BCS3 · N3156J

1 movement 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 SJU. 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 9 aircraft

Aircraft whose callsign most often ends at SJU, nearest first. Distance is straight line from the field, not track miles.
FlightFrom Altitude Ground speed Distance
JBU1903A320 · N586JBRaleigh/DurhamKRDU / RDU1,900 ft138 kt7 nmW of the field
AAL2830A321 · N916USCharlotteKCLT / CLT34,000 ft473 kt842 nmNW of the field
JBU433A320 · N508JLOrlandoKMCO / MCOon the ground5 kt1,033 nmNW of the field
JBU275A320 · N510JBHartfordKBDL / BDL37,975 ft438 kt1,066 nmNNW of the field
DAL1791A321 · N120DNAtlantaKATL / ATL34,975 ft487 kt1,167 nmNW of the field
JBU561A321 · N954JBBostonKBOS / BOS37,000 ft455 kt1,305 nmN of the field
JBU2389A320 · N627JBNewarkKEWR / EWR22,825 ft423 kt1,360 nmNNW of the field
UAL2025B739 · N66808DullesKIAD / IAD12,675 ft351 kt1,691 nmNW of the field
SWA343B738 · N8697CTampaKTPA / TPA5,800 ft226 kt2,782 nmWNW of the field

Outbound 9 aircraft

Aircraft whose callsign most often begins at SJU, nearest first. Distance is straight line from the field, not track miles.
FlightTo Altitude Ground speed Distance
JBU1134A320 · N639JBOrlandoKMCO / MCO22,725 ft423 kt54 nmNW of the field
JBU1990A320 · N534JBNewarkKEWR / EWR31,575 ft464 kt145 nmNW of the field
UPS329B744 · N583UPLouisvilleKSDF / SDF37,000 ft474 kt849 nmNW of the field
JBU1334A320 · N827JBOrlandoKMCO / MCO28,325 ft452 kt902 nmNW of the field
JBU276A320 · N807JBHartfordKBDL / BDL35,975 ft472 kt1,091 nmNNW of the field
JBU504A320 · N547JBNew YorkKJFK / JFK34,050 ft484 kt1,115 nmNNW of the field
FFT3345A21N · N677FRChicagoKORD / ORD34,000 ft430 kt1,539 nmNNW of the field
AAL3063A321 · N973UYPhiladelphiaKPHL / PHL35,950 ft424 kt2,598 nmWNW of the field
SWA2592B738 · N8665DOrlandoKMCO / MCO1,900 ft178 kt3,119 nmNW of the field

About Luis Muñoz Marín International

  • ICAO codeTJSJ
  • IATA codeSJU
  • ServesSan Juan
  • RegionPuerto Rico, United States
  • Coordinates18.439°N, 66.002°W

Luis Muñoz Marín International sits on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, east of San Juan. It is the busiest field in the Caribbean and functions as the connecting point for a great many smaller islands, so alongside the mainland services there is a constant flow of short over-water hops in small aircraft. Hurricane season is a real annual disruption here.

Receiver coverage across the Caribbean is patchy by nature, since a receiver needs land, power and a network connection. Expect aircraft to fade between islands and reappear, which is a coverage gap rather than a gap in the flight.

What the codes mean

Airports carry two identifiers and they are not interchangeable. SJU 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. TJSJ is the ICAO code: four letters, used by air traffic control, flight planning systems and trackers like this one. Its first two letters, TJ, marks Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, 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 San Juan 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:

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