![Inside Flightradar24, the website that tracks every plane in the sky](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220824180036-taiwan-airplane-super-tease.jpg)
Inside Flightradar24, the website that tracks every plane in the sky
CNN
Flight-tracking websites follow the real-time movements of the more than 200,000 planes that take off and land every day. Following planes has become the internet's new hottest hobby, with Flightradar24 leading the way.
(CNN) — On an average day, more than 200,000 flights take off and land across the world. That includes commercial, cargo and charter planes -- which account for about half of the total -- as well as business jets, private aircraft, helicopters, air ambulances, government and military aircraft, drones, hot air balloons and gliders.
Most of them are equipped with a transponder, a device that communicates the aircraft's position and other flight data to air traffic control, and that signal can be captured with inexpensive receivers based on a technology called ADS-B, for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. That's what flight-tracking websites do in a nutshell, providing users with a real-time snapshot of everything that's in the sky (minus a few exceptions).