new York
CNN
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People in New Jersey are panicking (!) over sightings of supposedly “giant drones” flying around at night. Government officials said at least some of these sightings were just plain old commercial flights.

It turns out there are some apps that could help prevent this kind of confusion.

Apps like Flightradar24, Plane Finder and FlightAware all have features that allow users to see what aircraft are flying around them in real time, including the thousands of commercial and private flights and helicopters that may be in the air at any given time . In some cases the apps can also identify unmanned aerial vehicles, such as commercial drones, which signal their location in the same way as aircraft.

These apps – or their websites – allow you to open a map of your location and view air traffic overhead, as well as details about individual aircraft such as altitude, speed and destination. You may also see a code indicating the aircraft’s airline or a private aircraft registration code.

FlightRadar24 and Plane Finder also let you point your phone camera at a plane in the sky and the apps will tell you about it, even at night – similar to Shazam for airplanes.

Flightradar24 says it can track more than 200,000 aircraft in the sky on any given day. And tracking these planes has become a hobby for some people. For example, when a US Air Force plane carrying then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan in August 2022, more than 700,000 people witnessed the event in real time via Flightradar24.

These apps collect the data that most aircraft transmit to ground stations and other aircraft, called “ADS-B” data, as well as satellites and other data sources.

However, if you’re having trouble identifying a plane in the app, you may need to zoom out on the map – experts say planes are often further away than they appear to the human eye.

Of course, not every aircraft will be displayed on these platforms – some small hobby drones, for example, don’t have the technology to broadcast their locations like commercial aircraft do. Some military aircraft and high-profile aircraft such as Air Force One are also blocked.