ACARS

Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS)

ACARS data is used to send messages to and from commercial airlines' aircraft. A good explanation can be found here.
The frequencies used in the United States for ACARS are:

129.125  
130.025  
130.450  
130.825
131.125 
131.425 
131.550  
131.850
136.575  
136.650 
136.700 
136.750 
136.800  
136.850 

These frequencies may be used in some areas:

136.675 Delta and Jet Blue
136.725 Delta 
136.775 Air Canada, Air Transat, American, Delta, JetBlue, United

• For ACARS questions, please post them on the Aircraft Monitoring Forum.
• Rockwell Collins/ARINC ACARS page

Operating Tips

• In general, all that is necessary to hook up a receiver and PC to receive ACARS is a good shielded connection from the speaker or earphone of the scanner to the soundcard. A discriminator tap is not required, since it is not involved in AM reception
• There's a brief sync tone sent before each transmission; if the software doesn't receive it, no decoding will occur. Most scanners' squelch cannot open up fast enough, so keep the squelch off. There are, however, a few scanners that do open up fast enough; these include:
  • Win108
  • Yupiteru VT-125/150
  • Yupiteru VT-225/MVT-3100
  • Yupiteru MVT-7100/7200

Decoding Solutions

Links in bold are known to be compatible with certain SDRs such as the RTL-SDR, either directly or piping audio via applications like Virtual Audio Cable

For other RTL-SDR solutions, see the Big List of RTL-SDR Supported Software. Some of the packages listed here may work with other SDRs

• ACARSdec
• ACARS Pad For Iphone, Ipad or IPod Touch
• acarsd
• Airnav
• Hoka Code 3-32
• KG-ACARS
• MultiMode (MAC systems)
• MultiPSK
• PDW
• PlanePlotter
• rtl_acars_ng
• SkySpy
• Sorcerer
• Winradio Digital Suite
• Winradio Advanced Digital Suite

Mailing Lists

• acarsd Yahoo group
• ACARS on QTH.Net
• ACARSlogs on QTH.Net