An executive logs into their company account from IP address 45.248.142.57. “Conventional” geolocation might resolve that IP to Sydney. Misleading, because the traffic is coming from an aircraft at 35,000 feet, and the city‑level placement doesn’t apply.
Today we’re unveiling two new IP intelligence tags — airport and airplane — now in private beta. They add critical context to IP addresses, helping you understand not just where an IP resolves geographically, but the actual circumstances behind the connection.
Want a sneak peek? Explore live examples on our public tag explorer: Airport and Airplane.
At IPinfo, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to improve the way we collect and interpret data. These tags are the latest step, boosting not just accuracy, but also the context that surrounds every IP.
What These Tags Do
- Airport identifies IP ranges used on airport premises — primarily terminal public Wi-Fi.
- Airplane identifies IP ranges used in flight, capturing onboard connectivity patterns often tied to satellite‑backed networks.
Both tags are location‑aware, but more importantly, context‑aware.
How We Built It
We combine multiple evidence streams before assigning a tag:
- Aggregated device connectivity and sensor data
- SSID/BSSID patterns
- Provider and ASN signals
- Geospatial analysis
Each tag is applied only when multiple layers of corroboration are present. A single noisy signal isn’t enough — we prioritize precision over coverage.
What We’re Seeing So Far
Our early tagging results are promising, and we’re continuing to expand coverage. The table below summarizes current metrics for airport and airplane tags in our private beta.
What You Can Do With Them
- Recognize when an IP belongs to an airplane — not just a “weird” ASN.
- Detect sessions inside airports, not just geographically near them.
- Segment traveler behavior from local activity.
- Tune identity, fraud, or attribution models using context — not just location.
- Understand the places behind IPs with higher resolution than ever before.
We’re continuing to expand coverage, validate accuracy, and explore additional signals. If you’re curious how this might fit your stack, stay close. This is just the beginning.
Curious Facts About Airplane & Airport IPs
- One IP ≠ one passenger. In flight, dozens (or hundreds) of devices often sit behind the same public IP via NAT. Identity signals get noisier.
- We don’t “chase” planes. The IP’s lat/lon stays anchored to the provider’s ground egress. The airplane tag is the context that traffic is onboard and moving.
- Exit IPs can change mid-flight. Providers may reroute; your session can see an IP swap without the user doing anything unusual.
- IPv6 shows up when you fly. Early data: airplane has strong IPv6 adoption (e.g., Starlink/SpaceX), while airport skews IPv4 because venue networks are still mostly IPv4.
- Satellite fingerprints. Airplane IPs cluster around satellite providers (Starlink/SpaceX, Intelsat, Viasat). Almost 100 % of airplane ranges are also tagged satellite (1,500 + of 1,511).
- Airport leans toward enterprise/venue ISPs (e.g., AT&T enterprise subnets in the US).
- Not all airports look the same. Large hubs can have multiple SSIDs and VLANs; smaller fields sometimes reuse generic ISP gear. We handle both without overfitting.
- Lounges and hotels can fool you. Lounges (and hotels inside terminals) resemble airports/airplanes by SSID alone. We disambiguate with terminal polygons, overlap ratios, enterprise BSSID vendors, and motion.
- Small overlap is normal. A handful of ranges wear both airplane and airport tags briefly — typically when aircraft are on the ground using provider backhaul.
- Airport co‑tags mirror venue Wi‑Fi. Airport ranges most often carry bittorrent, webserver, ssh, and hotspot and each tells a story:
- bittorrent: travellers killing time with P2P movie or game downloads.
- webserver: captive‑portal or splash‑page hosts that every device hits before it gets online.
- ssh: remote admins (airport IT or vendors) managing kiosks, POS terminals, or IoT gear.
- hotspot: public access points serving thousands of transient devices every day.
Why This Matters
Aviation isn’t a fringe edge case. Globally, airlines carried ~8.7 billion passengers in 2023 (about 24 million per day on average), according to ACI, and the worldwide system sees roughly 100,000 flights each day. That’s a massive volume of sessions flowing through airport Wi-Fi and in-flight networks — exactly where these tags provide clarity.
This new layer of context unlocks concrete wins across cybersecurity, fraud, adtech, and analytics.
- Cybersecurity & fraud: Treat airplane as a context flag: de-prioritize “impossible travel” alerts, expect IP swaps mid‑session, and raise friction only for sensitive actions on shared airport Wi‑Fi. Use airport to recognize captive‑portal/guest networks where device identity is noisier by design.
- Adtech & attribution: Use airport/airplane as inclusion/exclusion signals and bid modifiers: promote travel‑adjacent offers in terminal traffic, run awareness in‑flight, and retarget post‑landing. Adjust measurement windows for in‑flight latency.
- Product & UX: Adapt experiences for travelers: defer bandwidth‑heavy flows mid‑flight, prompt “save to watch later,” and relax MFA retries on captive‑portal networks while keeping recovery paths safe.
- Network & infrastructure intelligence: Spot shifts to satellite backhaul or venue networks, then tune PoP selection, peering, and QoS/TTL policies; plan cache and retry strategies for high‑latency legs.
Airport and airplane tags are now available in private beta, and we're continuously improving our coverage with better detection algorithms and expanded data sources.
Ready to add contextual IP intelligence to your stack? Contact us to join the early access program and see how these new tags can enhance your location data.
About the author
As the product marketing manager, Fernanda helps customers better understand how IPinfo products can serve their needs.
