Flight tracking enables travellers as well as those picking up travellers after a flight to know whether a flight has landed or is on schedule, for example to determine whether it is time to go to the airport.
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There are many reasons people track private aircraft – because they are aviation enthusiasts, to snag a lead on a news story, to gain market intelligence on a competitor, or to leverage money out of Elon Musk by creating a Twitter account showing all his aircraft movements.
All aircraft have unique identifying numbers that can be used to track their flights and to identify their owners. Well, sometimes. Flight information is available from commercial and nonprofit organizations who assemble and make available vast amounts of flight data.
Modern-day technology on commercial airliners is so good that air traffic control can track the aircraft's position even when it's flying over an ocean.
The most tracked flight consists of 4.79 million trackings and was achieved by ZZ177 RAF Boeing C-17A Globemaster III, carrying Queen Elizabeth II's coffin, from Edinburgh, Scotland to London, England on 13 September 2022.
The plane carrying Queen Elizabeth II's coffin has broken records to become the most-tracked flight ever. According to aviation tracker website Flightradar24, about five million people followed along online as the deceased Queen was flown from Edinburgh to London on September 13.
He's been expanding his collectibles; Musk owns four jets and recently dropped $78 million on a Gulfstream G700, intended to replace his Gulfstream G650ER.
Most flights are intended to spend as little time as possible over water, since storms are more common over the ocean than on land. An aircraft would not be safe to fly over the Pacific Ocean due to the stormy weather and frequent lightning strikes that occur there.
Most commercial airlines that travel between East Asia and the Americas avoid flying over the Pacific Ocean due to high costs and safety concerns, such as the risk of flying during stormy weather.
And despite that success, landing a plane on the water is extremely dangerous. Ditching is a controlled emergency landing on water. It can be caused by almost anything, but usually it's because of engine failure or running out of fuel. Pilots only decide to ditch an aircraft when there is no better alternative.