Anyone who learned to fly in the last 10 or 15 years knows about it. Print, TV, and online journalists worldwide know it as a trusted aviation resource when there’s a mishap. Airplane geeks infatuated with listening to pilots and controllers jabbering at hundreds of airports around the globe can’t seem to turn it off. It’s LiveATC.net, a free link to air traffic control communications that’s available anywhere there’s a good Wi-Fi signal. I find LiveATC’s iPhone app a lifesaver when I neglect to bring my PJ2 portable com radio to the airport. Just as important as live audio, LiveATC includes an extensive archive of past transmissions from all the sites it monitors.
“LiveATC captures air traffic control conversations at more than 1,500 different airports located on every continent except Antarctica,” said founder Dave Pascoe. “We’re live in 64 countries with over 3,400 channels and over 1,200 receiver sites. We have many customers interested in our audio capture service today, like the NTSB. One of the first things that, in talking with some of the investigators, they pull the ADS-B tracks. They pull the LiveATC audio because it's expedient for them when they're headed out the door to a crash site.”
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