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Persons on the US no-fly list are not only unable to fly to the US (obviously), but to board a flight which might enter US airspace e.g. in an emergency. Is there any way or online resource to find out which flight paths particular flights use, and which flight paths have or do not have the potential to be redirected to US airspace?

Edit for clarification: Thank you all for the resources. I am specifically looking for flights (or information on flights) which will not enter US airspace including (to the extent foreseeable) on an emergency basis. I am assuming that whether or not a flight will or might enter US airspace is foreseeable and part of the organization of commercial flight-paths?

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    Wow, that’s restrictive especially with ETOPS. You might want to ask on aviation stackexchange.
    – RoboKaren
    Oct 13, 2018 at 19:17
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    @RoboKaren "I'm a passenger and I want to use an airline"-type questions are usually closed as off-topic on Aviation. They'd punt it straight back here: the question is about travelling by plane, not about aviation.
    – David Richerby
    Oct 13, 2018 at 19:34
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    @phoog I'm a regular-ish user of Aviation; this is a travel question. It's not about airlines: it's about travellers. It's not about flying: it's about being flown.
    – David Richerby
    Oct 13, 2018 at 22:56
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    @DavidRicherby It's about determining the possible paths that a plane flying from one airport to another might take. It's about aviation. There are two questions with 30 votes each that discuss commercial passenger flights avoiding Mexican and Israeli airspace respectively. I don't see why US airspace would be any different.
    – phoog
    Oct 14, 2018 at 4:16
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    @DJClayworth Easy: East Asia to Vancouver... cuts across Alaska. Even some domestic Canadian flights like Vancouver to Toronto can cross the border. In the past, Canada to Cuba flights had to specifically fly offshore because the US wouldn't allow entry, and obviously any flights from Canada to Mexico, Central and South America will cross.
    – user71659
    Oct 16, 2018 at 2:44

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All the resources in @kiltannen's Answer will allow you to see historical flight paths between airports.

What you then need to do is eliminate all city pairs where a routing has had a US airfield as the nearest suitable landing point at any time. You can use gcmap.com to overlay direct paths and airports.

For example, you would not be able to fly from Eastern Australia or New Zealand to Japan because at some point, the nearest airport is Guam or other US territories.

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There are a few options for you to look into:

Flight Stats provides comprehensive flight information for all flights originating in the United States and also fairly comprehensive coverage for overseas flights in Europe. For other countries, the data you receive is hit or miss.

The content it provides (on US flights) is comprehensive. You can see the flight path on a variety of maps, all powered by Google Maps.

Flight View offers much of the same information as Flightstats above. You get a live map (although not as pretty as Flightstats) time and delay information, and more. The one area where Flightview really shines is mobile apps. They offer free mobile flight tracking apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and other platforms.

Flight Wise Might be the best as it is geared more towards the technical information about a flight. And this may allow you to work out the potential for diversion into US and whether there is a flyover of US airspace.

There are quite a few other tracking sites, but these seem to be pretty popular for data about US flights, which I think is what you are more focused on right?

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  • She seems to be looking for quite the opposite - flights that are not US flights, and that avoid US air space.
    – Jim MacKenzie
    Oct 16, 2018 at 22:49
  • Yesss... The way she has phrased her question - she seems to want to be able to make sure her flights are never going to be landing in the US or flying over - so it is a bit of a case of using these tools to she which ones have a risk for her...
    – kiltannen
    Oct 17, 2018 at 0:17
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Another difficulty not mentioned so far is that in an emergency planes can and will land anywhere including military airfields. Hell, once a civilian plane landed at Kitsap of all places (it was not allowed to take off after). Now, of course most US military bases are on US soil but there are foreign ones and I have no idea whose law applies should your plane land at Ramstein Air Base for example. It's a mess based on my readings.

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