skytrack is a command-line based plane spotting and aircraft OSINT reconnaissance tool made using Python. It can gather aircraft information using various data sources, generate a PDF report for a specified aircraft, and convert between ICAO and Tail Number designations. Whether you are a hobbyist plane spotter or an experienced aircraft analyst, skytrack can help you identify and enumerate aircraft for general purpose reconnaissance.
Planespotting is the art of tracking down and observing aircraft. While planespotting mostly consists of photography and videography of aircraft, aircraft information gathering and OSINT is a crucial step in the planespotting process. OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) describes a methodology of using publicy accessible data sources to obtain data about a specific subject — in this case planes!
- Tail Number 🛫
- Aircraft Type ⚙️
- ICAO24 Designation 🔎
- Manufacturer Details 🛠
- Flight Logs 📄
- Aircraft Owner
✈️ - Model 🛩
- Much more!
To run skytrack on your machine, follow the steps below:
$ git clone https://github.com/ANG13T/skytrack
$ cd skytrack
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ python skytrack.pyskytrack works best for Python version 3.
skytrack features three main functions for aircraft information gathering and display options. They include the following:
skytrack obtains general information about the aircraft given its tail number or ICAO designator. The tool sources this information using several reliable data sets. Once the data is collected, it is displayed in the terminal within a table layout.
skytrack also enables you the save the collected aircraft information into a PDF. The PDF includes all the aircraft data in a visual layout for later reference. The PDF report will be entitled "skytrack_report.pdf"
There are two standard identification formats for specifying aircraft: Tail Number and ICAO Designation. The tail number (aka N-Number) is an alphanumerical ID starting with the letter "N" used to identify aircraft. The ICAO type designation is a six-character fixed-length ID in the hexadecimal format. Both standards are highly pertinent for aircraft reconnaissance as they both can be used to search for a specific aircraft in data sources. However, converting them from one format to another can be rather cumbersome as it follows a tricky algorithm. To streamline this process, skytrack includes a standard converter.
Further Explanation
ICAO and Tail Numbers follow a mapping system like the following:
ICAO address N-Number (Tail Number)
a00001 N1
a00002 N1A
a00003 N1AA
You can learn more about aircraft registration numbers here
⚠️ Converter only works for USA-registered aircraft
ICAO Aircraft Type Designators Listings
skytrack is open to any contributions. Please fork the repository and make a pull request with the features or fixes you want to implement.
- Obtain Latest Flown Airports
- Obtain Airport Information
- Obtain ATC Frequency Information
If you enjoyed skytrack, please consider becoming a sponsor or donating on buymeacoffee in order to fund my future projects.
To check out my other works, visit my GitHub profile.