Plane spotting near me: what might you see at the airport?
Planner is a free web app by CatchFlights for planning a day of plane spotting near you. Find the airports around you, pick one and a day, and it lists the aircraft types the receiver networks saw there on that weekday over the last 12 weeks — rarest first, with how often, at what time of day and with which airlines, and what is on its way there right now. Or search for a type, such as an A380 or an An-124, and see at which airports near you it was seen and on which weekdays. It covers every airport we have data for, the small fields included, and it runs in the browser with nothing to install.
Reviewed:
You know where and when: what might come
- Choose the airport, or let Planner find the ones near you — your location stays on your device.
- Choose the day. Planner hides what comes every day and lists the rest: “seen on 10 of 12 Saturdays”.
- Each type shows the hours it was usually seen, the airlines it came with and when it was last there.
- The week view shows at a glance which day is the best one for your visit.
- At the fence, the top of the page lists what is on its way to the airport right now, soonest first, with an estimated arrival from position and speed.
You know the type: where to see it
- Search for the type you are after.
- Planner lists the airports around you, or around any airport you choose, where it was seen — with the days and the weekday it was seen on most.
- From there, one tap shows what else comes to that airport on the same day.
What the numbers are — and what they are not
Every figure is what the receiver networks CatchFlights uses saw, in local time. Where no receiver covers the runway, movements are missed, so the real numbers are higher. Days on which the receivers barely covered an airport are left out instead of being read as a type’s absence, and an airport with too little data says so instead of showing a weekday pattern. Holidays, airshows and one-off visits cannot be read from the past, and Planner does not try.
For the full list of what flies at an airport, see the airport pages.