Following a full flight

[joe921]

I just have a question I was wondering how you would track a whole flight for after the aircraft leaves depature and goes to the center how would I find the center link to listen to here on LIVEATC?

[derekjackson]

Check this out:

http://www.liveatc.net/forums/listener-forum/newark-departures-for-a-noob!/

[AeroBill]

Joe921,

   It's not usually possible to track and entire flight as many of the ARTCC frequencies are not yet covered by LiveAtc,
especially if it is a very long flight. You can often track some flights between major airports if they are within a few hundred
miles of each other, i. e. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. This may be true of the West Coast also, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, etc.
    One way to do this is to carefully listen to departure for the hand off to the center and what frequency they give to
the aircraft. You could then type in the frequency on LiveATC's home page frequency search box and see if LiveATC covers it.
  Another way is to type in (for example) "zbw" in the airport search box. This will show all the Boston Center frequencies LiveATC covers. You may find the Center frequency there. (Thanks to Dave for providing all the Boston Center frequencies)
     If you live close to a metropolitan area you should get an aircraft scanner if you don't have one. This will give you
some additional tracking capability, at least for maybe 100 miles for aircraft, depending on your location, altitude of
aircraft, etc.
     You will want to check regularly for any added Center frequencies since they are being added to LiveATC regularly.
     Happy listenting.

[K5PAT]

Even if LIVEATC had complete coverage of a flight, you might not be able to follow it since most Center feeders scan several frequencies on a feed. The scanner may be stopped on another frequency when your flight calls in to ATC and you will miss the call.

[dave]

Even if LIVEATC had complete coverage of a flight, you might not be able to follow it since most Center feeders scan several frequencies on a feed. The scanner may be stopped on another frequency when your flight calls in to ATC and you will miss the call.

That's correct.  ATC sectorization is complex, and can change even during a 24-hour period.  So even if we had coverage everywhere (as noted, we don't) it would still be difficult.  Still, we are working on making tracking a little easier than it is now.  But it will still require a little knowledge on the user's part.  It will never be easy, because it is inherently a difficult problem to solve.

[JetScan1]

To put things in perspective there are approximately 400 high altitude sectors covering the US. 

From the Center ARTCC page ....

http://www.liveatc.net/feedindex.php?type=us-artcc

There is around 60 high altitude sectors that are listed and I'd say maybe about 20 of those sectors are on radios that aren't overloaded with too many frequencies that it would make tracking a flight possible. So that's about 5% coverage of high altitude airspace over the US (not even including low altitude airspace).