Monday, February 15, 2021

The Flights of the Dictators

Airplane tracking maps like Flightradar24 and FlightAware are a fantastic resource for tracking flights around the world in real-time. However both Flightradar24 and FlightAware don't track all planes. At the request of governments, individuals and corporations some aircraft (often considered sensitive) are not shown on these live tracking maps. A significant percentage of those planes whose flight data is censored are aircraft registered by dictators and authoritarian regimes.. 

That is where Dictator Alert comes in. Dictator Alert is an interactive map showing the recent flight data of dictators around the world. To provide this map Dictator Alert uses flight data captured from from ADSB-Exchange and also from its own antennas installed at different locations around the globe. Dictator Alert checks all flights recorded by ADSB-Exchange and their own antennas with aircraft registered by authoritarian regimes. 

Dictator Alert tracks planes registered by governments described as 'authoritarian regimes' on the Democracy Index (2019). Currently this includes over 200 planes. When the flight of a plane registered to a dictatorial regime is identified by Dictator Alert it is shown on the interactive map, published on the Dictator Alert website and a message posted to the GVA Watcher Twitter account.

No comments: