Mapping the Altitude of Planes

Elevation - Flight Paths is an interactive map which maps aircraft flight paths around the world. Each flight path on the map is colored to show the altitude that the plane was flying at each point on its journey. The lighter the color of the flight path the lower the altitude at that location.

The map reveals some interesting patterns. For example planes obviously have lower altitudes when flying in and out of airports. It is therefore easy to pick out major airports around the world from the clear landing and take-off flights paths shown on the map.

The map uses flight data from the OpenSky Network. You can view planes flying in real-time for yourself using the real-time flight tracking maps Flightradar24 and Plane Finder.

You can also view the landing and take-off flight paths of airports around the world using Plane Finder's Global Coverage Map. Plane Finder uses data from a network of ADS-B receivers around the world to map the flights of plane in real-time. The Global Coverage Map uses a week of this data (from July 2019) to reveal the flight paths taken by planes. For this map one week's worth of data has been merged together and compiled to make a single interactive map. If you zoom-in on any airport you can clearly see the common flight paths taken for both landings and take-offs at that airport.