Dear ones on a flight? Track it real time on your phone

It is 12.10pm. Malaysia Airlines MH 183 is preparing to depart. Cabin crew are about to close the doors. Anusha P sends out a message to her husband that the flight is about to start before she switches off her phone. Ramesh, who had reached home by then after dropping his wife, taps an app on his phone. And the flight appears on his smartphone screen.He can see it roll down the second runway, gain speed, take off and fly straight over Velachery, Perungudi and across the Marina and settle on its cruising altitude over the Bay of Bengal towards Kuala Lumpur. Now you can track planes real time in 3D as they flies in and out of airports across the globe on your smartphone, computer or tablet. It is like playing a video game. The image of the plane can be panned around and a cockpit view offers a view of the horizon as the pilots see. People like Ramesh will be able to track the flight all the way till it reaches its destination airport's parking bay.
As airports in India are struggling to offer live flight information to passengers online, a bunch of aviation enthusiasts with a small plane tracking device installed on their rooftops world over are bringing live data on planes at any airport in the world to anyone who has a good net connection.
Flightradar24, a plane tracking website, uses the ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) signals from planes to track their location, altitude, speed, and direction. The feed is provided online for anyone aviation experts and amateurs. And the feed comes in handy for passengers to track their plane to find out the exact arrival time. Accident investigation teams have also studied the data to pinpoint what went wrong during a crash.
The website of Flightradar24 says that they get flight information from a combination of sources -ADS-B signals from planes, satellites, and radar information.
Except the four private airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, other airports have not been able to post their flight arrival and departure timings live online on their websites. AAI airports are still grappling to bring together information from their radar, airlines, and other sources onto a single platform. This often leaves passengers in the dark with regard to delays in arrival and departure. The tracking app and website help people find out the status of their flight without going through the hassle of calling up a call centre or the airport's landline.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI)'s attempt to revamp the Chennai airport's website is also stuck in the red tape for the past five years.
An AAI official, familiar with air navigation technology, said, “ADS-B is the next generation technology in navigation. It will make radars redundant. Almost all commercial airliners have ADS-B receivers and transmitters onboard which will gauge its location using GPS and broadcast it while flying. This also helps planes find their way without looking for signals from ground stations." Indian airports use it to track planes that fly over the ocean. Flight tracking sites capture these signals from the planes using ADS-B receivers --a tiny antenna connected to a TV set-top box kind of equipment -to pinpoint details of a flight, complete with its name, call sign, aircraft type, and other details.
“The tracking websites are being used by amateurs and airline officials alike. AAI is setting up air traffic flow management system to find out traffic congestion at other airports and an AOCC (Airport Operators Control Centre) for real-time tracking of flight delays and allotment of slots at airports. But, these are cumbersome processes which are still being perfected while such flight tracking websites by foreign companies have gone way ahead in offering a quick and easy solution.
Around three-and-a-half hours after MH183 took off from Chennai, Ramesh logs in to his flight tracking app. The plane is nearing Kuala Lumpur airport. He switches on the cockpit view and can see the plane glide down. At the swipe of a finger, he pans across the plane and can spot iconic skyscrapers like the Petronas Towers as if he is sitting inside the plane.