I'm watching your turbulence on Flightradar24.

So here I am, watching your flight on Flightradar24. The thousands of yellow planes sparkle on my screen like little metal stars. Wait! The barometric altitude and speed graph suddenly dip. The captain enters the emergency code “7700” into his transponder for the world to see. Are you struggling with turbulence? Will the plane land safely? Are you aware that seven thousand people around the world are tracking your potential life-or-death experience now?

This fall, I finally earned my PhD in YouTube. A depression-fueled obsession with aviation accident investigations brought me deep into a world I never expected to truly understand as a social sciences student. It started with easily digestible snippets of aerospace engineering related to minor incidents—chain reactions explained step by step—that made me feel vaguely knowledgeable about something I actually knew nothing about.

There was this channel, Mentour Pilot, hosted by a feeble and unassuming Swedish pilot who never indulged in the overt sensationalism that often comes with YouTube coverage of disasters. He made the technology surprisingly digestible. More than that, I developed a deep appreciation for the language aviation investigators use to improve safety. Reports emphasize facts, causes, and preventive measures rather than placing blame on individuals—rooted in the belief that most accidents result from systemic failures (besides overt criminal cases, of course). This was appealing to me. Global cooperation and communication enabled commercial aviation to become the safest form of transportation in the world. If you ignore the pesky little pollution problem, the fact that humans accomplished this is pretty amazing.

It was a brief love affair with aerospace engineering, one that dissipated as soon as I remembered that numbers are, in fact, hard. But some knowledge stuck. When my boyfriend pointed out a tiny sensor jutting out from the bottom of our A320neo and said, “I wonder what that does,” I found myself confidently nerding out about pitot probes for five whole minutes. “Did you know there was once a wasp nest in a pitot probe that the pilots didn’t notice? Yeah, the plane crashed and unfortunately everyone died on board.” And that was that.

This curiosity led me to Flightradar24. A new app to perpetually open and close was found, a new hyperfixation was born. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a real-time flight tracking app that collects data from transponders and air traffic control to display locations, routes, and details about planes. The app is frankly amazing.  Born out of a 2006 hobby project by two Swedish enthusiasts, Flightradar24 was one of the first to make real-time ADS-B tracking accessible. In the old days, the only members of the public who could really access this information were aviation enthusiasts with their old crusty radios–those dedicated enough to tune into the local air traffic control. Nowadays, there are more than 20,000 Flightradar24 ground-based receivers in neighborhoods around the world. Those thousands of receivers allow this information to be processed and displayed publicly to millions online.  Aviation professionals and journalists alike praise it for contributing to the ‘democratization of air traffic’.

And honestly, it really is quite intriguing. At 21:57 in Amsterdam, I open a tiny yellow plane on Flightradar24. I am now 38,975 feet above Unimak, the largest of the Aleutian Islands. Wikipedia tells me this island is home to Mount Shishaldin, one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world. Sixty-four people live here. I am on Philippine Airlines flight PAL126 from MNL → JFK, cruising at 530 knots with little turbulence over the fifteen-hour journey. At this point, the sun will be creeping through the airplane windows. With the 3D flight simulator, I can be there, hovering above the mountains. Like unlocking a secret part of the world. Rugged peaks, brown bears, and porcupine caribou.

PAL126 over Alaska. Flightradar24 3D view feature uses terrain maps and aircraft models to provide a flight simulation based on real time data

However seemingly benign and wholesome this is, another key feature of Flightradar24 is that you can set notifications for almost anything—including emergencies. During a general emergency, pilots input the number “7700” into their transponders to alert nearby planes and air traffic control that they need immediate assistance. As soon as this happens, Flightradar24 picks it up. While the chances of it being a true disaster are low, a potentially life-or-death situation is suddenly pinged to thousands of people’s phones. Often this happens before the people on the flight even know there is an emergency.

Given this ability, the app’s popularity spiked after major aviation events like the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption and the disappearance of flight MH370 in 2014. Flightradar24 is hypnotic. It’s like waking up and checking Twitter but for a different kind of annoying people. At any given moment, thousands of planes crisscross the sky, each carrying lives, stories, and destinations. These people become passengers, and their journeys become data points.

One night, while mindlessly scrolling, I noticed a dozen planes suddenly diverting midair off the coast of Cyprus, heading west. What was going on? I ran to Google and found out Iran had just launched a ballistic missile toward Israel. I had witnessed global conflict unfolding in real time—through a digital map of little yellow planes.

Watching Flightradar24 made me feel knowledgeable about something. I could supposedly interact with global happenings without a sensationalist undertaste, given that Flightradar24 is so technical. But then there was, of course, the possible morbid curiosity. When emergencies are squawked, online communities rush to “investigate.” They listen in to ATC, scan weather data, and consider every possible cause. I found myself sheepishly invested in these updates. When a plane successfully touches down, anonymous icons dutifully comment "landed <3" as we exchange a virtual collective sigh of relief. It is thrilling.

Then the thought occurred to me: Why am I so drawn to this? Am I obsessively checking this flight because I want to make sure it lands safely? Or is it something else?

Is this possibly just another kind of doom-scrolling that reduces real disasters to minute entertainment (yes)? I had always found the suburban obsession with true crime a little cringe—is this just the tech bro version of it? Humans seem drawn to engaging with fear and disaster from a safe distance. I had never really liked true crime films about murders or disasters, but now, I was one of these disaster tourists too.

I began to wonder if consuming this data actually made me more informed or just a passive observer of tragedy. I mean, I’m not a professional. How helpful is this tracking behavior to myself or others? When I brought this up with my boyfriend, he reassured me: “It’s thrilling because you wonder how the pilot is dealing with the obstacle, not because you’re enjoying the emergency.” That made sense. But I still squirmed in my self-reflexiveness, wondering if I was dipping into morbid curiosity when I ‘checked on’ emergency planes on Flightradar24.

Maybe the feeling came from the detachment of consuming crises through an app. When you’re up late scrolling, following an emergency out of boredom, it can make tragedy feel like content. The app sees its highest traffic during emergencies because, honestly, that’s what people find thrilling.

But perhaps the major thrill of Flightradar24 isn’t the disasters—it’s the visibility. It makes something that was invisible visible. While fighting military planes turn off their transponders so as to not be detected, many still use ADS-B systems during training or routine missions. This means they’re sometimes trackable on Flightradar24, even if details like their destination or model are listed as “N/A.” Thus, this information is now public, but not always publicly advertised. 

Nevada is brimming with military training flights; you can watch your tax dollars pollute the local nature in real time. You can see the deportation flights that some governments try to downplay or conceal. You can see little yellow Russian government planes flash in and out of view, as GPS jamming attempts to conceal their whereabouts. You can literally watch what is probably Assad’s plane fleeing Syria. Furthermore, Elon Musk famously had a public meltdown over the tracking of his private jet, and Taylor Swift threatened to sue the teenager who exposed her carbon footprint using ADS-B data. This information is public, but not publicly advertised.

I guess my obsession was driven by curiosity, compounded by the feeling that I was in on something secret. You can watch geopolitical conflicts unfold in real time, piece together patterns, solve cases in which you have no actual stake. Become a Reddit detective, if you will.

In the end, I think my Flightradar24 habit is harmless—it’s ethically neutral. My boyfriend compared it to catching a quick glimpse into a Dutch curtainless home: “Sometimes you just look because you can.” And maybe that’s it—Flightradar24 gives you access to something that’s not really meant for you, and that makes it hard to look away.