(CNN) — On
an average day, more than 200,000 flights take off and land across the
world. That includes commercial, cargo and charter planes -- which
account for about half of the total -- as well as business jets, private
aircraft, helicopters, air ambulances, government and military
aircraft, drones, hot air balloons and gliders.
Most
of them are equipped with a transponder, a device that communicates the
aircraft's position and other flight data to air traffic control, and
that signal can be captured with inexpensive receivers based on a
technology called ADS-B, for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast.
That's what flight-tracking websites do in a nutshell, providing users
with a real-time snapshot of everything that's in the sky (minus a few
exceptions).
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