Wolfram Alpha has launched a new feature which can let you know about the planes flying overhead. If you’ve among those curious ones, looking up the sky and wondering where that plane is actually headed to, where it’s coming from, what airline it belongs to, etc then now you can know the answer to these questions, thanks to Wolfram Alpha’s new flight tracker.
What sets this apart from other website’s or flight trackers? Aircraft can be tracked based on GeoIP location. You don’t need to enter any location, nor airline name, nor flight number but Wolfram Alpha will identify location based on visitor’s geographical location.
Wolfram Alpha Flight Tracker
How does this work? Simply type this in the search box – “flights overhead” by visiting Wolfram Alpha. Here is a direct link for your convenience. Wolfram Alpha will automatically track your location and will let you know information about aircraft that should be visible to you, assuming a clear sky and unobstructed view. On a mobile device, the results are based on latitude and longitude and if that is also not possible then Wolfram Alpha will use the best available location information from your browser.
The awesomeness doesn’t stop there. Want to know more about that aircraft? No problem, just click on the flight and you’ll have more information about this flight like origin, destination, flight duration, full map of flight’s path, sky map and much more. But while enjoying all these detailed information, also note that the information is five minutes old because of Federal Aviation Administration sets up a five minutes delay into its feeds. As a result of this, there may be some slight discrepancy between the actual and projected position of any flight.
You can also know the flight status by doing a quick check of upcoming departures with a search like this “flights from NYC to Los Angeles International Airport”. This is particularly useful when you’re on the ground and missed a flight or a friend of your’s is arriving at the airport but misplaced the exact flight number.
This is really very useful to satisfy the curiosity of many of you out there. For now this works only for the U.S. Now there’s no need to wonder about that high flying plane in the sky, as we can know more information using this awesome new feature.
StockC says
WolframAlpha has my GeoIP wrong by 25-40 miles. I could easily input a GeoIP in lat-lon from Google Earth. Is there any way to correct my location? It looks as if WolframAlpha is using a ‘black box’ approach to locations.