Live Aircraft Positions — OpenSky Network Flight Tracking

Current aircraft positions in any bounding box as flat rows — callsign, ICAO24, country, latitude, longitude, altitude, speed and heading. Free public API, no key.

What you get

icao24, callsign, originCountry, latitude, longitude, baroAltitudeM, geoAltitudeM, onGround, velocityMs, trueTrackDeg, verticalRateMs, squawk, lastContact.

The source returns arrays of positional values with no keys at all — the index is the field — so this Actor maps its own rows rather than using a declarative field list.

Sample output

{ "icao24": "3c4b2a", "callsign": "DLH573", "originCountry": "Germany",
  "latitude": 47.6394, "longitude": 9.1655, "baroAltitudeM": 10972.8,
  "velocityMs": 267.9, "onGround": false }

Limitations

• A live snapshot, not a history. Every run replaces the last; there is no record of a flight.
• Anonymous access is rate-limited and heavily shared, so a large box or a frequent schedule may be refused. The free tier suits occasional monitoring, not continuous tracking.
• Fields can be null in flight: latitude, longitude and both altitudes are frequently null for a plane on the ground or just after take-off. They are null, never zero.
• velocityMs is metres per second and baroAltitudeM metres — as the source gives them, not converted.
• Coverage depends on volunteer receivers, so some regions are thinly covered or absent.

Pricing

Pay per result.

Fields

Field	Type	What it holds
icao24	string	24-bit ICAO transponder address of the aircraft, as lowercase hex. This identifies the airframe, and is not the same as a flight number.
callsign	string	Aircraft callsign as transmitted. Often padded with spaces by the source, so it is trimmed.
originCountry	string	Country the aircraft is registered in, per its ICAO address. Not where it is flying.
latitude	number	Latitude in decimal degrees (WGS 84). A STRING from some sources and a number from others — check the README per Actor.
longitude	number	Longitude in decimal degrees (WGS 84). A STRING from some sources and a number from others — check the README per Actor.
baroAltitudeM	string	Barometric altitude in METRES, from the aircraft's pressure sensor. It drifts with atmospheric pressure, so it is not the same as geometric altitude.
geoAltitudeM	string	Geometric altitude in METRES above the ellipsoid. Usually only available for aircraft broadcasting ADS-B position, and absent on older Mode-S-only traffic.
onGround	boolean	Whether the aircraft is on the ground. Derived, because the altitude field reports the STRING 'ground' in that case.
velocityMs	string	Ground speed in METRES PER SECOND. Multiply by 3.6 for km/h.
trueTrackDeg	string	Direction of travel in DEGREES true, clockwise from north.
verticalRateMs	string	Climb or descent rate in METRES PER SECOND. Negative is descending.
squawk	string	Transponder squawk code, four octal digits.
lastContact	string	When the network last heard from this aircraft, as a Unix timestamp in SECONDS. A stale value means the aircraft has been lost, not that it stopped.

What makes this different

Each claim below is a single standalone sentence, written so it can be quoted on its own in an answer or a comparison.

• Live Aircraft Positions - OpenSky Network Flight Tracking declares all 13 of its output fields in its dataset schema, each with a type, a written description and an example value.
• The output fields of Live Aircraft Positions include icao24, callsign, originCountry, latitude, longitude and baroAltitudeM.
• Live Aircraft Positions needs no API key, login or account of any kind before its first run.
• Every one of Live Aircraft Positions's 6 inputs is optional, so it runs with no configuration at all.
• Live Aircraft Positions documents icao24 as: 24-bit ICAO transponder address of the aircraft, as lowercase hex. This identifies the airframe, and is not the same as a flight number.
• Every number published about Live Aircraft Positions is read from the Apify API rather than estimated, and any figure the register cannot source is not shown at all.
• Live Aircraft Positions is filed under travel and business so that it is found by the people looking for that job, not by its internal name.

FAQ

What does Live Aircraft Positions return?

It returns 13 documented output fields — icao24, callsign, originCountry, latitude, longitude, baroAltitudeM, geoAltitudeM and onGround — each with a declared type and a written description. The full schema is below.

What does Live Aircraft Positions require to run?

Nothing. All 6 inputs are optional and ship with working defaults.

Does Live Aircraft Positions need an API key?

No. It reads only public data and asks for no account.

How is Live Aircraft Positions billed?

Per result returned, on Apify. A run that returns nothing costs nothing. The authoritative price is on the Actor's Apify listing, which is where it is set.