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LAPD Air Support Flights

Community-received LAPD helicopter positions from August 2025–26, with flights, orbit sensitivity and dwell time by geography. Receivers miss some flights, and they miss more in some areas than others.

Source
FAA registry and Airplanes.live historical ADS-B traces
Updated
Desk
Crime
Terms
Licensed. Write to us for access and terms; researchers and newsrooms should ask about rates.
What ships
20.9M positions. CSV, column dictionary, licensing terms, SHA-256 manifest.
Files
  • fleet.csv6 KB, 30 rows
  • coverage.csv0.3 MB, 6,570 rows
  • base_clusters.csv4 KB, 40 rows
  • orbit_sensitivity.csv1 KB, 5 rows
  • dwell_by_tract.csv0.2 MB, 2,495 rows
  • dwell_by_district.csv1 KB, 15 rows
  • dwell_by_neighborhood.csv19 KB, 272 rows
  • hourly_profile.csv6 KB, 168 rows
  • event_spot_checks.csv1 KB, 3 rows

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Columns in base_clusters.csv

  • base_id
  • label
  • lat
  • lon
  • n_endpoints
  • n_starts
  • n_ends

The fleet flies about nineteen hours a day, then stops for two

Mean number of LAPD helicopters airborne in each hour of the local day, averaged across the year to 15 August 2026.

0.01.02.003691215182123Hour of the day, local
Source: Basin Data, lapd-air-support-flights. Positions are community-received ADS-B, so this is observed flying and undercounts real flying wherever reception is poor. The 6am figure is 0.06 aircraft, against 2.11 at 1pm, a thirty-three-fold swing. Hours are local time and the average spans weekdays and weekends together.