Kind: captions
Language: en
planes they're all around us and they
come with an abundance of data
but how can we look at them in a little
bit more detail over the next few
minutes we're going to look at how to
find out what is flying around us and if
we have a plane on a satellite image how
can we find out what type of plane is it
what airline is it and where is it going
we're also going to look at how to find
out what's the name of this plane that
was destroyed at the main airport in
Sudan's cartoon let's take a look at
answering some of those questions
thank you
hi everyone and welcome back to this
series on how to do open source
investigations from home I'm Ben and
this is part 18 so let's get started
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first I want to take you over to the
inspiration for doing this video it
actually came from a flight tracker
called gertion who's on Twitter here and
specializes in tracking flights and
planes and any objects that may appear
in the sky Guardian actually sent me
this video from a YouTuber called Planes
Trains and everything and he came across
this plane that's actually caught on
Google Maps or seen on Google Earth as
well we can see it here
I was looking on Google satellite
and this is what I found
you can clearly see the horseshoe curve
but you can also see an aircraft flying
overhead as well which I think is really
cool
gertion thought how about we start to
look up what airline is it and where is
it going well if we have a look at the
date of the satellite image that's
usually a good point to start with let's
identify the time that this flight might
have been flying over this location if
we have a look at the date we can see
that it's on the 13th of April 2020. now
thankfully if we wanted to have a look
at the specific time that was going well
it's not really here but we can use
something called Apollo mapping Apollo
mapping is a third-party retailer of
satellite imagery so what we can do is
we can put in our coordinates
and we can have a look at available
satellite images from that day
obviously because I'm looking at Google
Earth I want to make sure that I have
maxar available and maybe some of the
others just to keep my search Field open
we remember that the satellite image was
taken on the 13th of April 2020.
so I'm going to scroll down to that date
here we are we have a satellite image
from 13th of April 2020.
now we won't be able to view this image
entirely because this is a third-party
reseller if we have a look carefully we
may be able to see the flight path on
this plane right here
I think we can see that right across
there but what this tells us is that
that plane was caught on a satellite
image flying over at 1134 UTC time now
this is useful because we have the date
we have the time and we have the
location
and we can use something called flight
radar Flight Radar 24 is a flight
tracking system
and it allows you to look at current but
also past flights from anywhere in the
world of commercial airlines
Flightradar24 is one of the few tools
that I will show that actually costs
money
I'm not getting any commission for this
but they have different packages you can
purchase basic silver gold and business
I use the gold subscription for me
that's affordable because I do this work
all the time however you can still get
away with a lot using basic or even
silver as well because this flight was
in 2020 it goes past my subscription and
I don't want to show you because I don't
want you to have to sign up to the most
expensive subscription of business
so what we're going to do is use some
other examples but I wanted to show you
how to go through those steps of looking
at the satellite imagery and you can use
this with any flights that you may
identify on satellite imagery any
pictures of planes as well where you've
taken a photo of a plane and you want to
know where it's going you can do the
exact same process photos satellite
images videos news articles you can look
at them all in that aspect
so the place that we're going to go to
to start this tutorial off is Heathrow
Airport in London I've been to Heathrow
Airport a lot it's a very busy airport
so I thought this might be a good way to
identify some planes on the tarmac
and use them as a case study to identify
where they might be headed so if we have
a look at Heathrow I have a satellite
image from July 2022.
and look we have a plane taking off we
can see uh it's slightly curved upwards
and we can see that it's moving quite
fast because of that red green blue
that's been left behind there from the
shutter so we can see that that's slowly
taking off
so we have the questions what type of
plane is it
what model is it
what airline is it and where is it going
so let's take a look by going through
the exact same steps we just looked at
before
okay so we have a satellite image and we
have a date but we need to know the time
so we go back to Apollo mapping this
time on a polo mapping I'm just going to
search for Heathrow Airport our
satellite date
is July 2022.
specifically because I've clicked on the
plus icon it will give me the day so
we're looking at July 11 2022 on this
satellite image now we have three July
11's here 2022
I think the satellite image on Google
Earth is probably 30 centimeters since
it's quite a a clear satellite image we
can even see some
stripes on the tail fin and maybe
something up near the cockpit here
so I'm going to say it's one of these
two how do we check
well we can load the image
you can see if maybe we could possibly
see the plane on the tarmac
now this might seem like quite a blurry
preview image but we can't see a couple
of things first of all there's a white
little indicator up on there where we
have this Runway here
this is in a different location to that
one so maybe let's try the other image
so we have two images here
and we can see there's a white piece
there and a white piece there
so it seems like it's captured two
planes but they're both at different
times
the plane that we want is the one that's
kind of back towards this bit so if we
count the circles that we have here the
grass circles one two three
well we've got one that's kind of out of
that
and then we have one that's one two
three back here perfect that's our image
so now we're going to have a look at
what time that was taken
it was taken at 10 56 UTC time that's
really helpful because now I can go to
flight radar
now just to remind you I have a gold
subscription which allows me to look
back one year on flight radar
so the way I'm going to do that is by
first going to Heathrow
I'm going to zoom in to that location
and as you can see Heathrow is quite a
busy little airport with lots of little
planes around there
but I'm going to go back to my date
which if we have a look at Apollo
mapping was
July 11 2022 at 10 55.
so 2022 July and we're going to go July
11 and I'm going to go time UTC so
remember it's 10 55 so I'm going to
choose 10.50 start playback I'm going to
hit pause straight away
and we can see there's a plane on the
runway there if I go back a little bit
1053 so we have one at 10 53 but this
image was 10 55 36
so let's play it forward a bit more 10
55. now what was the second on that
we have uh 10 55 36 that's 57 so let's
go back a little bit more
so 10 55 so this will be our plane
so what we have is the time of July 11
2022 1055 UTC
July 11 10 55 UTC
so we have a plane baw
778 this is the cool thing about flight
radar is it also brings in a lot of
details about these planes you can have
a deeper look at some of these planes so
this plane is a British Airways A320
251n that's helpful to know we've got
their satellite image here let's have a
look at some things so we've got these
kind of stripes on the back
oh this has stripes
it's got something on the front near the
cockpit we have a bit near the cockpit
there it's got the side engines as well
so let's have a look at an actual Airbus
a320n we can go to the breakdown of what
airbus a320s look like
and we can specifically go down to the
a320n here
and start having a look at some close-up
details as to what they look like this
is the Airbus A320 and we can have a
look a little bit closer so we can see
that there's the engines on the side
there
well that's pretty correct there it's
got those those wind shapes there
like this
so that's a pretty nice way it's even
got the tipped Wings we can see those so
it's a nice way that we can just do a
visual match as well to see if we're
correct
another way we can also do that is that
we have a plane on the tarmac so we can
measure it as well so we have the
wingspan here which is 35.8 meters what
I'm going to do is
measure from tip to tip and it looks
like we might have about 35.8 meters of
course that might be not exact but that
looks pretty pretty accurate there we
can have a look at the length so it's
35.75 meters so we'll have a look at the
length here
I'm going to go from the front here
so I've got about 39 that may be the
bending of an image or it may be because
this is higher than this bit so on a
satellite image it's not equal there
could be a couple of different reasons
for that as well so there's a couple of
things that we can look at there right
now if we wanted to have a look at
perhaps where that flight was going
well we can do that too
so if we go back to our flight radar we
know this is baw and what we can do is
check that entire flight so we know that
this is registration this is ba 778 so
we could even do a search for that
flight specifically
British Airways 778 and we can see that
there seems to be a regular flight if we
scroll back down to the bottom
our flight was on
July 11 July 11 here we are London to
Stockholm so all these flights to London
in the Stockholm and we can even
download uh so we could either play that
and play that entire flight to see where
it went and how long the flight took its
path
and we can also actually take that
flight from here so July 11. we can
download a KML and we can open that KML
up into Google Earth to see the exact
flight path and this is quite useful if
you for example sitting on your own
flight and you see a location and you
want to know where you've flown over or
what that interesting building was or
what you saw on the flight or even just
as you're about to land and you flew
over a nice piece of
a hiking area or a sport oval or some
other building that you're quite curious
about
you can see the flight plan like that
so those are just some ways that we can
answer so many questions just from that
simple satellite image that we saw
before of a plane taking off from
Heathrow
so what if we have a plane on a Tarmac
that we want to identify that might have
been destroyed
well here's a satellite image from
planet which was taken on the 24th of
April and we can see what is clearly a
number of destroyed planes
specifically a large one that is located
right here now the plane's not about to
take off so it's not going to be active
as a current flight but rather it's just
park there the reason why this plane was
destroyed was due to clashes in the city
in Sudan between the Sudanese military
and the rsf or rapid support forces
and we want to specifically identify
what was that plane what airline did it
belong to and what type of model it
might have been
we can also see some of the destruction
from April 19 before it so it's been
destroyed for a few days since that
satellite image
this is from planet satellite imagery it
is a commercial satellite imagery
organization that often publishes this
sort of stuff for free online as well
and they surface that through news
articles or they send that out to those
that regularly look at their satellite
imagery
so first of all let's maybe head to
cartoon
on Google Earth now we know that was the
airport
and interestingly enough we've got a
number of satellite images where there
is a plane in the same location and it
seems like the same type of planes that
are always present in that specific
location this might be because they are
a certain type of large plane they
appear to be different to many of the
others so they appear to be larger than
these we also have a number of planes
that often park down here as well but
they don't appear to be the same size as
these large ones let's see what sort of
details we can pick out of this so we'll
go to cartoon
Khartoum International Airport we'll
show it on the map we'll zoom in and see
if we can identify what's happening
there so we'll click on there there's
obviously no planes taking off at the
moment there are considerable clashes
still in the area and still destroyed
planes on the tarmac what we can do is
perhaps have a look at whether there
have been departures from Khartoum
airport a useful thing about flight
radar
is that we're also able to find out
arriving flights
departing flights and we're able to
search for that as well but we're also
able to have a look at this section
called more and this opens up a lot of
details about what's actually available
to see so we can see arrivals
these are scheduled arrivals but they
probably won't be coming in because of
the damage to the airport
there we can see departures as well
these are scheduled we can also see what
might be on the ground as well so we can
see that there's a few different
airlines that are on the ground so we
see the UN
is there and we can have a specific look
at some of the details there right
so we can see the flight from the U.N
where it may have come into and where it
may have gone into so we know that this
plane might be a un plane and we can see
some of those other planes that would
have come in as well so it seems like
what we're looking for is quite a large
plane this one specifically it was a
very similar plane they seem to use the
the little side steps as well that we
can see with a lot of these ones that
they've been using
and it looks like it might have been a
large plane in that location
very similar to what we see here as well
so we have an A330 there as well which
is quite a large plane and we can have a
look at if uh that track matches up
so let's have a look at maybe where it
came into so this one came from Riyadh
and let's have a look at the final
destination of this flight so we know
that it went up in this kind of area and
the end of that track was up towards
here so we don't have a final location
of that but we do know that this flight
sv459 came off in this section and may
have come up here and that that A330 is
quite a large plane
so how can we tell some more details so
it doesn't appear to be any other a330s
there
and we also can look just like what we
did before by having a look at the
wingspan of the A330 the wingspan of the
A330 is apparently 60.3 meters we'll
just double check that on the Saudi
Airlines website as well so the wingspan
for the A330 343 is
60.3 meters
so what we're going to look at is both
the wingspan for this one looks almost
like 60.3 meters there
and that probably indicates maybe that
we're looking at the same plane or same
type of plane that would have pulled up
in this Bay here it does say that this
is the one that's on the tarmac here and
we can have a look for news articles
about that so if we have a look at HQ HZ
aq30 so this is our specific one we can
even copy that into this and we can have
a look and see if there's any news
articles
simple flying has identified this a
Saudi Airbus A330
damaged in Sudan conflict and these are
the aircraft that have been impacted by
the conflict we even have footage that's
from the ground as well so it gives us
just a little bit more detail and really
helps us verify that content by
verifying what type of plane that might
be where it came from and what airline
it might have belonged to so just from
this satellite image alone we've been
able to tell that this plane
specifically is a Saudi Airline Airbus
A330 343 and it flew in from Riyadh
so all of those details were able to
tell just from a simple satellite image
and just being a little bit creative
around using other sources of data such
as aerial traffic to identify
what's actually happened here I hope you
enjoyed this session about aerial
traffic and aerial data
it's important to think about the way
that this data can be fused without the
traditional things that we've looked at
like satellite imagery like social media
information
and some of that content that you may
see in the news how that can be
developed a little bit further with a
keen curious eye
I'll see you in the next session very
soon
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