In short

Aircraft announce themselves: ADS-B transmits position, altitude, speed and a unique transponder code.
A radar app on your phone shows the aircraft near you; match it by direction, distance and height.
Some aircraft never appear — no transponder broadcast, no receiver nearby, or the data is filtered.
CatchFlights turns the aircraft above you into a collection instead of a map.

Find the plane above you in five steps

Open a radar app with your location. Use an app or website that shows aircraft positions from ADS-B around where you stand, such as CatchFlights, and allow location access.
Note the direction and height. Face the aircraft and note its compass direction, and whether it is high and small (cruising) or low and loud (climbing or on approach).
Match the aircraft on the radar. Find the contact in that direction whose distance and altitude fit what you see. A compass-rotated radar turns with you, which makes this easier.
Tap it for the details. The contact shows the aircraft type, registration, operator and, where known, its route, altitude and speed.
Catch it. In CatchFlights, catch the aircraft to add it to your collection and your spotting logbook before it leaves your radar range.

How your phone knows which plane it is

The answer comes from the aircraft itself. Modern aircraft carry a transponder that broadcasts ADS-B — Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast. The aircraft works out its position by satellite navigation and transmits it, together with its altitude, speed, heading, callsign and a unique 24-bit address, about twice per second on 1090 MHz.

Air traffic control receives these messages, but so can anyone with a suitable antenna. Thousands of volunteers run small ADS-B receivers and share what they hear with community networks. An app then turns the stream into a picture: the 24-bit address (often written as a six-character hex code) is looked up in aircraft databases to find the registration and the aircraft type, and the callsign leads to the airline and, often, the route.

In Europe and the United States, ADS-B has been required for most airliners and larger aircraft since 2020, which is why nearly every jet you see from the ground can be identified this way.

Which dot is the plane you are looking at?

A radar view can show several aircraft at once. These clues narrow it down:

Height. Airliners cruise at roughly 30,000 to 41,000 feet (9 to 12.5 km). They look tiny, often draw a contrail, and are usually not near an airport. A large, loud aircraft is low — climbing out of or descending into an airport nearby.
Direction. Turn the radar with your compass, or hold the phone so north on the radar points north, and look for the contact in the direction you are facing.
Sound lags behind. Sound from an aircraft at cruising altitude takes around half a minute to reach you. Look ahead of where the noise seems to come from.
Distance. An aircraft straight overhead at 11 km altitude is still 11 km away from you. On a radar centred on you it sits close to the middle; one low on the horizon is much further out.

Why some aircraft do not show up

No radar app sees every aircraft. When one is missing, it is usually one of these reasons:

It does not broadcast ADS-B. Many light aircraft, gliders, balloons and some military flights carry no ADS-B transmitter or do not switch it on.
No receiver can hear it. ADS-B travels in line of sight. Over remote areas, mountains and oceans, or for aircraft flying low far from a receiver, coverage thins out.
It is filtered. Some operators ask for their aircraft not to be displayed publicly, and some data networks honour that.
The picture lags. Positions are collected by receivers and relayed over the internet, so what you see can trail reality by several seconds or more — enough to matter for a fast jet passing close by.

CatchFlights shows only what it actually receives and never invents an aircraft, a route or a photo. If a detail is unknown, the app says so.

Flight tracker or plane spotting app?

Flight trackers such as Flightradar24, FlightAware, Plane Finder or ADS-B Exchange show aircraft across the whole world on a map. They are the right tool for following a flight you or a friend are on, checking delays, or looking up an aircraft's history.

CatchFlights answers a different question: what is flying over me right now, and have I seen it before? Its radar is centred on you and limited to your radar range, which starts at 15 km and grows as you play. Every aircraft you catch is added to your collection of types, registrations, airlines, airports and routes, and saved in your spotting logbook with date, distance and place.

Make the question a game. Each new aircraft type earns XP, rare types are rated from Common to Legendary, and Skywatch can notify you when an aircraft you are still missing comes into range — even when the app is closed. See how CatchFlights works.

Common questions

Can I find out what plane flew over me earlier?

Flight trackers keep a history of past positions and let you replay them. CatchFlights is about the live moment: it records the aircraft you catch, with the time and place, in your own logbook.

Can an app identify a plane from a photo or its sound?

CatchFlights does not use the camera or microphone. Radar-based apps identify aircraft from what they broadcast, which also works for aircraft too high or too far away to recognise.

Why is the plane on the radar not exactly where I see it?

Data from receivers arrives with a delay, and an aircraft high above can be several kilometres away in a straight line. Between updates, CatchFlights moves each contact along its last reported course and speed, so the radar keeps flowing.

Want to know more about the aircraft once you have found it? Read our guide to identifying aircraft types, or start with the basics of plane spotting.

What plane is above me? How to find out right now