Frequently Asked Questions

Flight Analyser is a free, browser-based aviation intelligence tool that analyzes flight routes from FlightRadar24 CSV exports. It detects flight phases, estimates fuel burn and CO2 emissions, calculates direct operating costs, and provides interactive altitude and speed profiles — all without requiring an account or uploading data to any server.

Go to FlightRadar24.com, find the flight you want to analyze, open the flight detail page, and look for the download or export option to get the CSV track log. The CSV contains timestamps, positions, altitudes, speeds, and headings for every ADS-B data point recorded during the flight.

Flight Analyser accepts CSV files exported from FlightRadar24 with the standard column format: Timestamp, UTC, Callsign, Position, Altitude, Speed, Direction. The parser validates headers automatically and reports errors for unsupported formats.

Fuel burn estimates are modeled from average hourly burn rates for each aircraft type, distributed across flight phases using a duration-aware heuristic. They represent realistic approximations for scenario analysis and educational purposes. Actual airline fuel burn depends on payload, weather, ATC routing, and airline-specific operational procedures that Flight Analyser cannot observe from ADS-B data alone.

Flight Analyser detects eight flight phases (idle, taxi-out, takeoff roll, climb, cruise, descent, approach, taxi-in) using speed, altitude, and movement thresholds. Taxi-out begins at the first sustained ground movement above 5 knots. Takeoff roll is identified by acceleration through 40 knots. Airborne detection uses a 50 ft altitude threshold with speed above 80 knots. Cruise is defined as level flight above 18,000 ft at the 70th-percentile altitude.

Flight Analyser includes a comprehensive database covering major commercial aircraft families: turboprops (ATR 72, Dash 8), regional jets (CRJ, E-Jets), narrowbodies (A320 family, 737 family), and widebodies (A330, A340, A350, A380, 767, 777, 787). Each aircraft profile includes MTOW, maximum range, cruise speed, typical seat count, and hourly operating cost data.

Direct operating costs are broken into five categories: fuel (from estimated burn at configurable Jet A-1 price), crew cost per block hour, maintenance and engine reserve per block hour, insurance and depreciation per block hour, and navigation charges plus landing fees and ground handling. Default rates are set by aircraft family and can be manually overridden for custom scenario analysis.

Flight Analyser analyses one flight at a time, in depth. Loading another flight replaces the current one, so the workspace always reflects a single sector.

Yes. Flight Analyser runs entirely in your browser. Your CSV files are parsed locally using JavaScript — no flight data is uploaded to any server. The only network requests are for map tiles (OpenStreetMap) and the optional route library of pre-loaded sample flights.

Flight Analyser is designed as a desktop-first analytics tool but includes responsive breakpoints for tablet and mobile screens. For the best experience with map interaction and chart inspection, a desktop or laptop browser is recommended.

CO2 emissions are calculated using the ICAO standard emission factor of 3.16 kg of CO2 per kilogram of Jet A-1 fuel burned. The fuel burn estimate for the selected aircraft type is multiplied by this factor to produce the total CO2 output for the flight.

The data quality confidence score reflects how complete and consistent the ADS-B track data is. It penalizes data gaps, irregular sampling intervals, and sparse coverage. A high score (85+) means dense tracking with strong phase confidence. Medium (65-84) indicates usable coverage with some gaps. Low (below 65) means phases should be treated as approximate.

Yes, Flight Analyser is completely free to use. There are no premium tiers, no account requirements, and no usage limits.