Flight tracking records: the extremes we have observed

Every number on this page is measured from our own tracking log, not copied from a reference book. It covers 14,815 sightings across 57 days, starting 28 July 2026, and it changes as tracking continues.

8,963
Aircraft identified
10,147
Routes verified
14,815
Sightings logged
104
Countries of registration

The four extremes

Highest we have recorded
57,700 ft

17,587 m, reported by MSR985 on 30 July 2026. Airliners cruise between 30,000 and 42,000 ft, so anything far above that is usually a business jet, a survey aircraft or a barometric reading the transponder got wrong.

Longest route we have verified
16,496 km

QFA5, Sydney (SYD) to Frankfurt (FRA). Measured as a great-circle distance between the two airports, not as the track actually flown, which is always longer.

Longest single day of coverage
23h 58m

DAL2820 on 21 September 2026. This is time inside receiver coverage across the day, which is not the same as a single flight: a callsign flown twice in one day counts from the first contact to the last.

Busiest day of tracking
2,259

Distinct callsigns logged on 20 September 2026. Our own coverage varies with how often the snapshot refreshes, so this measures a busy day here rather than a busy day in the sky.

The rarest aircraft we have seen

Types we have a page for, ordered by how few individual airframes we have identified. A low count means we have rarely caught one, not that few exist.

AircraftTypeAirframes identified
Airbus A340-600 A346 4
Airbus A330-900neo A339 26
Airbus A350-1000 A35K 29
De Havilland Canada Dash 8 Q400 DH8D 40
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner B78X 42
Boeing 747-8 B748 49
Embraer E190 E190 54
Boeing 747-400 B744 60

And the ones we see constantly

AircraftTypeAirframes identified
Boeing 737-800 B738 1,130
Airbus A320 A320 950
Airbus A321 A321 600
Boeing 737 MAX 8 B38M 419
Airbus A320neo A20N 329

What our coverage does to these numbers

Every record here is shaped as much by when we were looking as by what was flying. This site reads a world snapshot on a schedule rather than watching continuously, and the schedule follows visitor traffic, so some hours of the day are sampled many times more often than others. An aircraft can depart, cross an ocean and land entirely between two of our readings.

That has a specific consequence worth stating plainly: absence is not evidence. A flight missing from these tables was not necessarily absent from the sky, and a type we have identified only twice is not necessarily rare. Both may simply have flown while we were not looking. The figures are a floor on what happened, never a ceiling.

Coverage also thins geographically. ADS-B depends on volunteer receivers on the ground, so it is dense over Europe and North America and sparse over oceans, deserts and parts of Asia. A record for "the highest aircraft" is really a record for the highest aircraft over a populated area with a receiver in range.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the highest altitude higher than airliners can fly?

Because transponders sometimes broadcast a bad barometric altitude, and a table of all-time maximums selects for exactly those errors. We discard anything above 18,000 m, the same ceiling the live statistics page uses, which removes the obviously impossible readings. Values between a normal cruise and that ceiling can still be equipment faults rather than genuine altitude.

Are these world records?

No, and we are careful never to call them that. They are the extremes of what this tracker has observed. Somebody flew higher, longer and further than anything on this page; we simply were not watching when they did.

How often do the records change?

They are recomputed once a day from the tracking log. Distance records move rarely, because the longest scheduled routes in the world are a short and stable list. The rarest-aircraft table moves much more often, since every new airframe we identify shifts the counts.

What counts as one sighting?

One callsign on one UTC date. If the same flight number appears in several snapshots through a day it is a single sighting with a first and last contact, not several, which is why the busiest-day figure is a count of distinct flights rather than of readings.

Why do rare aircraft show so few airframes?

The count is of individual airframes we have identified by their Mode-S address, not of flights. Seeing the same A380 twenty times still counts once. A low number means we have caught few distinct examples, which tracks how rare a type is without being a census of it.

How these are measured

These are records for this tracker, not for aviation. We see a sample of the sky: coverage depends on volunteer receivers, and our snapshot refreshes on a schedule rather than continuously, so an aircraft can fly a whole sector between two of our readings and never appear here at all.

That is why every figure is phrased as something we observed. The highest altitude is the highest anyone reported to us, and a transponder sending a bad barometric altitude will win that category over a real aircraft. The rarest types are the ones we have caught least often, which correlates with how rare they are but is not the same thing.

Everything here is recomputed daily from the tracking log, so the page moves. You can watch the same data arrive on the live flight map, or read how the underlying broadcasts work in our guide to what ADS-B actually is.