Planefinder Live Flightpath Scraper

What does Planefinder Live Flight Path Scraper do?

Planefinder Live Flight Path Scraper fetches the recent geographic track (latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, heading over time) of a currently-tracked aircraft from Planefinder's real-time protobuf API — the same feed the mobile app uses to draw a plane's live trail on the map.

Unlike the Planefinder Flight Path Scraper (which needs a flightId for a completed flight), this Actor works off an aircraft's live identifiers (dataSource + adshex) and returns whatever recent track Planefinder is currently holding for it.

Results are pushed directly to an Apify dataset, one item per track point, in chronological order.

Why use Planefinder Live Flight Path Scraper?

• Live trail visualization — draw the same trailing track the Planefinder app shows on its map.
• In-flight monitoring — poll periodically to build your own live tracking pipeline.
• Cross-check with live snapshots — combine with the Planefinder Live Plane Scraper (bulk snapshot) to see both current position and recent trail.

How to use Planefinder Live Flight Path Scraper

1. Get an aircraft's dataSource and adshex from the Planefinder Live Plane Scraper or Aircraft Info Scraper.
2. Open this Actor and click Try for free.
3. In the Input tab, provide one or more {dataSource, adshex, callsign} queries.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
5. Download results from the Output tab in JSON, CSV, or Excel format.

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	array of objects	Each needs dataSource (int) and adshex (string). callsign is optional. timestamp (unix ms) is optional and defaults to now.

{
    "queries": [
        { "dataSource": 80, "adshex": "3A3688", "callsign": "THT102" }
    ]
}

Output

Each item represents one track point, in chronological order (seq starting at 0).

{
    "lat": -15.991791,
    "lon": 169.630066,
    "posUpdateTime": 1785037581000,
    "altitude": 1950,
    "speed": 350,
    "heading": 140,
    "query_adshex": "3A3688",
    "query_data_source": 80,
    "query_callsign": "THT102",
    "seq": 0
}

Data table

Field	Description
query_adshex / query_data_source / query_callsign	The identifiers you queried
seq	Point index within this track, 0 = earliest available point
lat / lon	Position in decimal degrees
posUpdateTime	Unix timestamp in milliseconds for this point
altitude	Altitude in feet, or null if not reported for this point
speed	Ground speed in knots, or null if not reported
heading	Compass heading in degrees, or null if not reported

Technical notes

Planefinder's v5 live API encodes tracks as deltas from a shared reference point rather than sending full coordinates for every point (smaller payloads for a real-time feed). This Actor reverse-engineers and decodes that format; if Planefinder changes the wire format again, decoding may need to be updated — please report issues via the Issues tab.

Pricing

This Actor uses the Pay Per Event model: a flat $0.30 per track fetched, plus a negligible one-time actor-start fee — not per track point. You're asking for "this aircraft's recent track" as one thing, so you're billed as one thing, whether Planefinder returns a handful of points or several hundred. A query that returns no track isn't charged. (For comparison: a similarly-sized track from a competing live-tracking Actor billed per record would cost roughly $2 for ~400 points — a full track here is a flat $0.30.)

FAQ and support

This Actor uses Planefinder's public mobile API for informational purposes only. Do not use the data for commercial redistribution without verifying Planefinder's terms of service.

For bugs or feature requests, open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Custom scraping solutions are available on request.