UH-60 Black Hawk
ICAO H60The most numerous military helicopter in the air on any given day. Live UH-60, MH-60 and HH-60 positions worldwide.
Flying right now
Live · 30s- SKULL71 5,725 ft 23-14561 🇺🇸 United States
- PIKES50 5,400 ft 92-26423 🇺🇸 United States
- G20301 5,400 ft 10-20301 🇺🇸 United States
- G21122 4,325 ft 20-21122 🇺🇸 United States
- R20940 4,100 ft 17-20940 🇺🇸 United States
- TALON54 2,925 ft 09-20195 🇺🇸 United States
- R26326 2,650 ft 91-26326 🇺🇸 United States
- BT704 2,575 ft 168154 🇺🇸 United States
- PAT21 2,525 ft 09-20202 🇺🇸 United States
- BOSOX37 2,200 ft 84-23989 🇺🇸 United States
- G20131 2,125 ft 08-20131 🇺🇸 United States
- 08-20134 2,000 ft 08-20134 🇺🇸 United States
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Sikorsky
- Role
- Utility and assault helicopter
- Class
- H2T — Helicopter, 2 turboshaft engines
- Crew
- 4 — two pilots and two crew chiefs
- First flight
- 17 October 1974
- In service
- 1979
Operators airborne
About the UH-60 Black Hawk
The H60 designator covers the whole Sikorsky S-70 family, and between the Army's UH-60s, the Navy's MH-60R and S, the Air Force's HH-60 rescue helicopters and dozens of export operators, it is usually the most numerous single type on the feed after the Hercules.
Helicopters behave differently from everything else here. Sorties are short, altitudes are low, and coverage is patchy because ADS-B reception depends on line of sight — a helicopter at 500 feet is invisible to a receiver twenty miles away that would hear a jet at 35,000 feet easily. The live count on this page therefore undercounts the fleet more than a transport page does.
What you do see tends to cluster around bases and training areas, which is its own kind of information.
Callsign prefixes
- PAT
- Priority Air Transport — US Army
- DUSTOFF
- US Army medical evacuation
- JOLLY
- US Air Force combat rescue, HH-60
How to recognise it
- —Four main rotor blades, a canted tail rotor, and a low flat profile — the fuselage is deliberately short enough to fit inside a transport aircraft.
- —Tailwheel well forward of the tail, unlike most helicopters of its size.
- —On the feed: low altitude, ground speeds around 120 to 150 knots, and tracks that start and end at the same place.
Common questions
+ Why do so few helicopters show up on the map?
ADS-B needs line of sight to a ground receiver. A helicopter operating at a few hundred feet is behind the horizon for almost every station that is not very close by, so a large share of rotary traffic is simply never heard.
+ What is the difference between a UH-60 and an MH-60?
UH-60 is the Army utility version. MH-60R and MH-60S are Navy variants for anti-submarine work and shipboard support; the HH-60 is the Air Force combat rescue version. All share the H60 designator on this site.
+ What does a DUSTOFF callsign mean?
It is the US Army's medical evacuation callsign, in use since Vietnam. A DUSTOFF flight is a medevac, though in peacetime that frequently means training rather than a live casualty.