How can I use ADS-B Exchange to filter egyptian airline flights near a person’s location?
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Executive summary
ADS‑B Exchange (ADSBx) is the largest community-run, unfiltered ADS‑B/Mode S/MLAT network and offers live map, search, filters, and downloadable historic data for region- or aircraft-specific queries [1] [2]. The public Globe map and help pages explain searching by registration/ICAO and show a Filters sidebar, but ADSBx lacks a documented per‑person geofence filter or a simple “EgyptAir only near a given GPS point” built‑in button — you must combine the site’s search, filters, and exported data or use altitude/geographic bounding tricks to approximate that view [3] [4] [5].
1. How ADS‑B Exchange gives you the raw materials — unfiltered live and historic feeds
ADS‑B Exchange positions itself as a high‑fidelity, unfiltered flight‑tracking service with live positions up to twice a second and historic flight‑track exports selectable by aircraft, time period or geographic region [1] [2]. That combination means you can both view live aircraft around a point on the Globe map and request historic data limited to geographical rectangles or other ADS‑B fields for offline filtering [2] [6].
2. What you can do in the Globe map UI right away
The Globe map supports searching for registration, ICAO and aircraft type in the tar1090 search box and exposes a Filters tab in the right sidebar where you can restrict results [3] [4]. In practice that allows manual steps such as searching an airline’s ICAO/aircraft type (for example the carrier designator or specific reg prefixes) and then visually centering the map on a location of interest to see nearby flights [3] [4].
3. Why there’s no simple “EgyptAir near my GPS” one‑click filter documented
Community forum discussion and ADSBx support threads show users asking for origin/destination or airport filters commonly available on commercial sites, and responses note ADS‑B reception lacks some flight plan metadata and that not all UI filters on competing services exist on ADSBx [5] [7]. The site’s public doc and help pages describe search and filters but do not advertise a built‑in per‑person geofence or carrier‑only proximity toggle, so the capability must be assembled from existing tools [3] [2].
4. Practical workflow to find Egyptian‑airline flights near a person’s location
Use a two‑step approach: (a) locate the person’s coordinates on the Globe map and zoom to an appropriate radius; (b) use the search/filter pane to enter the carrier’s callsign/ICAO or aircraft registration prefix, or export geographic historic data and post‑filter by operator in a spreadsheet or script. ADSBx’s export options let you request historic data by geographic region and other ADS‑B fields, enabling programmatic filtering if the UI won’t do it directly [2] [4].
5. Workarounds and limitations you should expect
Because ADS‑B feeds are unfiltered and rely on reception, coverage gaps and blocked aircraft can occur; forum posts note ADS‑B lacks complete flight‑plan info that paid services sometimes supplement, meaning you may miss flights or lack origin/destination metadata without cross‑referencing other sources [5] [7]. ADSBx documents historic region exports, but users must handle geospatial filtering and operator matching themselves if the GUI won’t produce the exact carrier+proximity view [2] [3].
6. Alternatives and when to use them
For a simpler “show only flights by airport/operator near X” experience, commercial trackers with integrated flightplan data offer built‑in airport or operator filters on mobile and web (community discussion contrasts ADSBx with services that expose airport filters) [5]. If you need authoritative, commercial‑grade destination/origin fields, ADS‑B raw data may require joining it to flightplan services or operator registries — tasks ADSBx’s historic data export supports but does not automate in the UI [5] [2].
7. Transparency about sources and remaining unknowns
Our assessment draws on ADS‑B Exchange’s official site pages for data/export and map help [2] [3] [4] and community/forum threads noting UI limitations compared with other trackers [5] [7]. Available sources do not mention an explicit, native “filter by carrier within X meters of GPS coordinates” feature; therefore that exact one‑click capability is not documented in current reporting [3] [4] [5].
If you want, I can outline the exact search strings, ICAO codes or a short script to download ADSBx regional data and filter for Egyptian carriers — say whether you prefer a spreadsheet or Python approach and provide the target coordinates.