Live ATC From Your Smartphone or PC

Hi everyone

This week BBC 2 (UK) have been giving us a live insight into the workings of Heathrow airport including the ATC tower controlling all the aircraft movements.

Air Traffic Control plays a massive part in the safe travel of aircraft and many of us who enjoy our planes own an aircraft scanner/radio so we can listen to the traffic at the airport local to us or above our heads on the jet highways. I personally have one and use it as often as I can, living within a few miles of Norwich International Airport NWI/EGSH (UK) , however the airport is not very busy. Sunny weekends a lot of GA aircraft are buzzing the local skies so this provides some good listening, commercial jets are not so plentiful though.

When Norwich lets me down I can turn to the control centres in higher airspace and listen to commercial jets making its way above me. However as busy as control areas are I do really enjoy listening to airport ATC. To keep my ears happy I normally pick up my smartphone or head on over to the Live ATC website.

At Live ATC the internet provides live feeds from around the worlds airports. So if you want to listen into JFK ground like I do, from your PC or smartphone then you can thanks to Live ATC and its many contributors.

According to their site Live ATC users volunteer to have an airband radio based on their property and the signal is sent to their home PC and onto internet servers so it can be made available to listeners around the world.

Live ATC Coverage



Airports are normally organised by continent. American airports have their own list as it has a huge amount of fed to choose from. You can search for feeds too using either airport names or ICAO codes and hope to find what you are looking for. Obviously not all airports are covered, the USA has a good coverage and mainland Europe, with more airports coming online all the time. Feeds can be heard using, iTunes, Windows Media Payer, Flash Player or a Java Player. People interested in contributing to the site can do so from here unless you are based in the UK. The UK is not covered and this is why;

Why don't you have any feeds from the UK?

It is illegal to provide air traffic control feeds from within the UK due to an outdated law that originated back in 1942. The antiquated law states that although it is not illegal to sell, buy or own a scanning receiver in the UK, it must only be used to listen to transmissions meant to be broadcast to the general public.

OfCom (the U.K. regulatory authority for communications) has stated on numerous occasions: "It is an offence to listen to any other radio services unless you are authorised by a designated person to do so."

This means that it is illegal to listen to anything other than general reception transmissions unless you are either a licensed user of the frequencies in question or have been specifically authorized to do so by an authorized person. This is clearly a law that needs to be updated in light of the many educational uses for listening to aircraft communications. Furthermore, the original reasons for this law have long since become irrelevant.

Let's hope this law gets modified - there has been at least one online petition aimed at attempting to get some attention but it does not seem to have had much of an effect on Ofcom. If you are a UK citizen, please contact your MP and see if they can help make an exception to this law.

Now to address the UK issue there a petition needs to be set up and 100,000 signatures obtained to make within a year to get a chance of having the issue addressed in the house of commons. I wish to get a petition started soon and with your help get the signatures we require to get the ball rolling. I will keep you posted on this.

Back to the fun, I normally choose to listen when pottering around the house through my computer or through my smartphone with headphones. When turning in for the night I choose to listen to New York JFK ground mostly to send me off to sleep as background noise, using the smartphone app. Me heading to bed at between 10pm and 11pm is just as JFK is getting busy with the evening rush giving me plenty of quality listening.

I have also used it to listen to planes that I have family on, hearing them take off and land wherever they may be. Live ATC can also become more entertaining and given a whole new appeal when used alongside flight tracking sites like PlaneFinder and FlightAware. These are sites I will cover in future posts. The LiveATC site also holds archived recordings of most airports which you are free to listen too.

Live ATC is a fantastic, highly interesting listen, I have heard pilots misunderstanding directions, raising controller stress levels, pilots trying to get their own way to no avail and a whole load of interesting conversations and scenarios.

When the PC is not at hand and you need Live ATC on the move they have both Apple and Android apps. So as long as you have a steady internet connection, Live ATC is waiting for you. My review has been done using the Apple app although I have also used the android app and they both work similarly great.

On opening the app you are presented with a home screen showing the version number, a button to refresh the feed database, checking for new feeds or feeds that are down and a small 'i' which opens up app preferences. Below this is the app navigation allowing you to search feeds. The 'More' tab brings up options to view the top 50 feeds and some military feeds.

The interface is extremely easy to use with airport feeds organised by countries or state when USA is concerned. Each feed allows you to see the current weather conditions (METAR), airport diagrams and frequencies. Feeds you frequent can also be added to a favourites list for easier future access.

A nice little feature is the sleep timer, this allows you to set the app to run uninterrupted for the time you chose before switching off. This is handy for situations like my own when listening in bed and I fall asleep, the app will shut down after the 60 minute time ends.

In all LiveATC is a fantastic internet resource for all aviation enthusiasts and growing all the time. Hopefully this will tempt you to check it out and maybe provide your own local airport to us listeners.

Thanks for reading folks.