How LiveATC Went Live

Anyone who learned to fly in the last 10 or 15 years knows about it. Print, TV, and online journalists worldwide know it as a trusted aviation resource when there’s a mishap. Airplane geeks infatuated with listening to pilots and controllers jabbering at hundreds of airports around the globe can’t seem to turn it off. It’s LiveATC.net, a free link to air traffic control communications that’s available anywhere there’s a good Wi-Fi signal. I find LiveATC’s iPhone app a lifesaver when I neglect to bring my PJ2 portable com radio to the airport. Just as important as live audio, LiveATC includes an extensive archive of past transmissions from all the sites it monitors.

“LiveATC captures air traffic control conversations at more than 1,500 different airports located on every continent except Antarctica,” said founder Dave Pascoe. “We’re live in 64 countries with over 3,400 channels and over 1,200 receiver sites. We have many customers interested in our audio capture service today, like the NTSB. One of the first things that, in talking with some of the investigators, they pull the ADS-B tracks. They pull the LiveATC audio because it's expedient for them when they're headed out the door to a crash site.”

An amateur radio operator (KM3T) since he was a teenager, Pascoe got the idea for LiveATC in 2002. “I was on a year-long sabbatical and had gotten my private pilot certificate about a year prior,” he said. After earning his instrument rating, he became enamored with air traffic control communications. “I was also heavily involved with the virtual air traffic simulation network [Vatsim] and ATC simulator network/community and wanted to share real-world communications with my cohorts there.”

Pascoe decided the best solution was to put some receivers “on the air.” He said his background in communication systems and IT, as well as his heavy involvement in amateur radio, helped organize things. “My youngest brother lived near Boston and let me put some receivers at his house so we could monitor ATC there.” More than 15 years later, LiveATC became self-sufficient with the advent of smartphones, internet advertising, B2B opportunities to run commercial ATC audio streaming systems, and the sale of audio data.

Shortly after the service was launched, Max Trescott, a well-known CFI, podcaster, and amateur radio operator (K3QM) based in California’s Silicon Valley, recognized the value of LiveATC. “When I worked with student pilots in particular, a lot of them had difficulty learning how to communicate with ATC at a busy airport like my base at Palo Alto, for example. Vehicle procedures here are very nonstandard, so it was helpful for students to listen to the Palo Alto tower via LiveATC. It helped them rapidly improve their radio communication skills. Instrument pilots who wanted to learn to handle IFR clearances and fly instrument approaches got pretty good at that, too, by listening to Norcal Approach.”

In addition to live air traffic control communications, LiveATC offers users easy access to an extensive archive of ATC audio from all locations monitored. “We started off retaining about 30 days of data, similar to what the FAA retains themselves,” Pascoe said. “As storage got cheaper and more widely available, we increased our storage capability to store one year. In January of this year, I upgraded our storage again to add an additional four years. So nominally, we can store pretty much everything that we take in for four to five years from all over the world.”

The LiveATC Site

Using LiveATC is simple. Users visit the website and choose the ATC location they’re interested in hearing by typing the three or four-letter ICAO code for a Class B, C, D, or nontowered location. Alternatively, listeners can use the three-letter code for an FAA air route traffic control center (ARTCC) or type in the specific frequency they want to hear or the state in which the airport is located.

Never having searched by frequency before, I typed in 119.90, the frequency for our local tower at Chicago Executive Airport (KPWK). This is a VFR tower in Class D airspace just north of Chicago O’Hare International Airport (KORD). The frequency entry returned information for three dozen other ATC facilities in North America that share the same frequency. I didn’t find this method all that useful. Using the airport code returns information that’s much easier to decipher, most of the time.

From my travels, I knew the country code for England is E, so I added the airport code LHR for London Heathrow, but received this error message. “Sorry, ELHR is not currently covered by LiveATC.net.” Pascoe explained that there are countries such as the UK, Spain, and France that don’t allow third-party rebroadcasting of ATC frequencies, with controller privacy being one of the chief objections. The fact that ATC communications can be heard by anyone over an air band radio without any difficulty apparently never altered that objection.

The site offers listeners a variety of aviation resources in addition to the actual frequency feed, such as the Top 50 feeds in the LiveATC system at a given moment in time. 

“A lot of people seem to think that LiveATC.net is a service provided by the FAA,” Trescott explained, “but that’s the furthest thing from the truth.” While LiveATC is 100% owned by Pascoe, the site’s backend is run by just a couple of paid employees. The soul of LiveATC—about 99% of it—is staffed by dozens of volunteers who believe in the service they provide. “What we’re doing is such a niche that people find me rather than me looking for people,” Pascoe said. “I’ve got a guy whose full-time job is just building and shipping systems where they’re needed.”

The growing number of LiveATC feeds has evolved organically, according to Pascoe, hosted by “a large and increasing group of volunteers near airports around the world.”

New feeds are being added constantly. Feeds can also disappear for several reasons. “The volunteer who first established the connection may have moved, taking their radio equipment with them, or for some reason the volunteer is no longer able to provide service at that location.”

Pascoe said if a volunteer who’d like to establish a new feed can afford the equipment themselves, he’ll work with them. “We try very hard to recruit great volunteers who will take pride in maintaining high uptime and high-quality reception. LiveATC is truly a community where people pitch in and feed the network.”

He invited volunteers to get involved, especially “if you’re nearby an airport that’s not on the network.” He said that, unlike an ADS-B feed, setting up a new LiveATC feed is a little bit harder. “For good ADS-B signal reception, you just need to see the sky. VHF band ATC communications, however, are line of sight. It might not be something you’d put at your house, but maybe your flying club, or on top of a friend’s hangar, where they’d be willing to host the equipment. Again, we work with volunteers to find the best place for the receiver antenna so our listeners can hear both sides of the conversation. If the volunteer doesn’t have their own receiver or antenna and the airport’s high enough on our priority list, we’ll loan out the equipment more or less permanently, as long as someone’s there to host it.” Right now, Pascoe said LiveATC could really use a solid feed from George Bush Intercontinental Airport at Houston (KIAH).

Thought-provoking Content

There’s another link on the LiveATC website labeled “Interesting Recordings,” interactions that are auto-populated from the site’s forums. I skimmed a few one afternoon and stumbled across one labeled, “Real Close Call at Logan.” Even though I had absolutely no idea of what led to the event, spending 30 seconds here told quite a story. A Delta heavy jet was sent around during an approach to Runway 4R at Boston, and on the go, the pilot working the radios remarked, “Man, that was close.” In another, I followed along with a Milwaukee departure controller’s assist in mid-September to a VFR Cirrus SR22 over Lake Michigan when the aircraft’s engine quit. Thanks to the close coordination between the pilot and the Milwaukee controller, the Coast Guard was on scene within minutes of the aircraft hitting the water. Everyone aboard was rescued safely. You’d never be able to hear this kind of drama anywhere else.

“We aren’t perfect, but we do strive for constant improvement,” Pascoe said about his creation.