AirSafe is a real-time aircraft emergency detection and alerting system powered by RTL-SDR and dump1090. It monitors aircraft squawk codes to detect life-threatening aviation emergencies such as hijacks, radio failures, or general distress situations. Built for Waveband (YSWS) by Hack Club.

This project was inspired by the tragic Air India Express crash near Ahmedabad and aims to build public awareness and early response capability.

• Real-time monitoring of ADS-B aircraft data via dump1090
• Detects emergency squawk codes: 7500, 7600, 7700
• Terminal UI with aircraft information and ASCII plane art
• Plays an alert sound and logs all incidents to alerts.log
• Optional web UI for browser-based monitoring
• Dark mode and emergency list viewer in the web dashboard
• Ready for public display or emergency broadcast station integration

AirSafe connects to your local dump1090 server (localhost:8080/data/aircraft.json) and checks all nearby aircraft for emergency squawk codes. If one is detected, it:

• Logs the incident to a timestamped log file
• Plays an audible alarm
• Displays the emergency in both terminal and web UIs

pip install airsafe

• Python 3.8+
• dump1090 running on your local machine
• RTL-SDR dongle and antenna
• Python libraries listed in requirements.txt

Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

To begin using AirSafe, ensure dump1090 is running locally and your RTL-SDR dongle is connected.

Start dump1090:

./dump1090 --interactive --net

Run the AirSafe terminal interface:

python main.py

Run the AirSafe terminal dashboard:

python ui_dashboard.py

Launch the web dashboard:

python web_ui.py

Access the web dashboard at:

http://localhost:5000

The terminal UI will show emergencies as they occur, and the web dashboard will display a log-based summary.

AirSafe monitors the following codes that represent critical aircraft situations:

This list is extendable in squawk_utils.py.

All emergencies are logged with timestamps to:

data/alerts.log

Each entry includes:

• Flight number (if available)
• Squawk code
• Emergency type
• Altitude
• Aircraft hex code

This project is distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.