Know over which country is the plane of the relatives you are waiting for at the airport. Know the name of the village you just saw stealthily through the window of your train. Nothing could be simpler thanks to sites specialized in tracking, or real-time monitoring in good French. Presentation.
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How to follow the flight of a plane live?
The most well-known sites in air transport are Flightradar24 and FlightAware. Their map gives an overview of a very large part of the flights in progress all over the world. Altitude, speed, estimated time of arrival... These platforms manage to provide reliable, accurate and live information thanks to the data provided by the aircraft.
In addition to commercial passenger and cargo flights, official travel is also displayed. Thus, the plane of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives who went to Taiwan in August 2022 is the most followed in the history of FlightRadar24 with 708,000 people connected. Beyond this exceptional case, the community of avgeeks (aviation enthusiasts) never fails to follow and relay on social networks the cases of atypical flight routes, including diversions due to weather or a technical problem or deliveries of new aircraft.
At random, the real-time tracking of a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to São Paulo passing over the Paris region. Screenshot FlightRadar24.
Beyond real-time tracking, this site is a mine of information for any aeronautics enthusiast, since it contains the type of aircraft, its age, its registration and its flight history. Most airlines also allow you to track flight information in real time, but without necessarily giving your geolocation. By entering the flight number, origin and/or destination on the Flight Status page of the Air France website, it is possible to know the remaining flight time, its possible delay at departure or arrival, as well as the boarding and disembarking gates and terminals.
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Speed, stops, delay... How to follow your train live?
Trains running in Western Europe on a Sunday at 23pm. GeOps screenshot.
For its part, rail transport also has its real-time monitoring tools. If the SNCF has recently suspended its public geolocation service, other sites have taken over. This is the case of the Live Train Tracker tool developed by GeOps, a German company specializing in data and mapping.
It gives an overview of the trains currently in circulation in much of Europe. The site is based on open data made available by railway undertakings. By clicking on the points, you can know the number of the train, its services and its possible delay.
Carto Graou makes it possible to know the speed, the services and the possible delay of the SNCF trains. Here a zoom on Paris and its suburbs on a Sunday evening. Screenshot Carto Graou
Carto Graou, meanwhile, is limited to France. It indicates the TGV, Intercités, TER or RER currently in circulation, each type of train being represented by a different color. As indicated by the founder, a driving agent of the SNCF: "This card is a beta project linked to a business application dedicated to driving and commercial agents of SNCF trains. It is delivered without guarantees of reliability or updating." To follow the trains of other railway companies in Europe, go for example to maps.vasile.ch for Switzerland or zugradar.oebb.at for Austria.
Most railway company websites also allow you to track trains, even if they do not always have a map. The SNCF website allows you to know the departures and arrivals to come in a station. Entering the number of a train allows you to know its composition, its number of cars and its stops. If Google Maps can also be a solution to know between which stops a train is located, its reliability depends on the data provided by the operators.