U-2 Dragon Lady
ICAO U2A glider with a jet engine that flies at 70,000 feet in a pressure suit. Live U-2 Dragon Lady positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No U-2 Dragon Lady is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Lockheed
- Role
- High-altitude reconnaissance
- Class
- L1J — Landplane, 1 jet engine
- Crew
- 1
- First flight
- 1 August 1955
- In service
- 1956
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the U-2 Dragon Lady
The U-2 flies higher than almost anything else with a person in it — above 70,000 feet, where the pilot wears a full pressure suit because the atmosphere is too thin to survive a cabin failure. It has been doing so since 1956, which makes it one of the longest-serving aircraft of any kind.
It is famously difficult to fly. The very long, thin wing means the aircraft is close to both stalling and overspeeding at altitude at the same time, and landings are flown with a chase car calling out the height because the pilot cannot see the runway properly.
Retirement has been announced and reversed repeatedly. The current plan removes it in the late 2020s. It occasionally transmits on transits, so this page is not always empty.
Callsign prefixes
- DRAGON
- A recurring U-2 block
- OLIVE
- Frequently seen on Dragon Lady sorties
How to recognise it
- —An extraordinarily long, thin wing on a slim fuselage — it looks like a sailplane.
- —A single engine, a bicycle undercarriage, and wingtip skids instead of outrigger wheels.
- —On the feed, an altitude above 65,000 feet is the giveaway; nothing else manned goes there.
Common questions
+ How high does the U-2 fly?
Above 70,000 feet, roughly twice the altitude of an airliner. At that height the pilot wears a full pressure suit, as astronauts do, because unprotected exposure would be fatal within seconds.
+ Why is the U-2 hard to land?
It has a bicycle undercarriage, an enormous wing that refuses to stop flying in ground effect, and very poor visibility forward. A chase car follows the aircraft down the runway calling out heights to the pilot.
+ Is the U-2 being retired?
It has been scheduled for retirement several times since the 1990s and reprieved each time. The current plan removes it in the late 2020s, with the mission passing to satellites and unmanned aircraft.