Users of the Flightradar24 service, which tracks thousands of aircraft in real time, spotted two aircraft with interesting call signs over Ukraine, which refer to the obscene nickname of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. For a short time, PTNPNH1 became the most tracked aircraft in the world.
Users of the Flightradar24 service, which tracks thousands of aircraft in real time, spotted two aircraft with interesting call signs over Ukraine, which refer to the obscene nickname of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. For a short time, PTNPNH1 became the most tracked aircraft in the world.
Ukraine’s airspace has been closed since February 24, 2022, due to a full-scale Russian invasion due to a high risk to aviation security. As a result, civil aviation has virtually disappeared from Ukrainian skies.
However, on July 11, 2025, Ukrainians spotted an An-124 Ruslan civil aviation transport aircraft in the sky over Kyiv. Subsequently, a number of journalists and bloggers, including Andriy Tsaplienko and Denys Pyatyhorets, noted that two aircraft with the call signs PTNPNH1 and PTNPNH2 were displayed on the Flightradar24 website.
«Now it has become known that the code of the plane in the air is PTNPNH1. In addition, a second civilian plane with the code PTNPNH2 is flying in the Dnipro area. The message to Moscow is clear», — wrote Tsaplienko, who later deleted his post.
«If someone didn’t understand the joke from the first reading (like me), I’ll write the names of the planes in Cyrillic: PTN PNH1, PTN PNH2. It seems that Ukraine showed the Hu*l two tricks today. From both hands», — Pyatigorets said.
There is little information about both planes on Flightradar24, and they periodically disappear from the service’s map. The description of the aircraft states that it has an incorrect transponder code. «This can happen when the transponder is incorrectly programmed or when someone enters a code that is not assigned by the control center,» the service’s help explains.
When PTNPNH1 appears on the map, it becomes one of the most tracked aircraft in the world, with over 3,000 users tracking it at the same time. On Flightradar24, aircraft with the callsign PTNPNH are displayed with the UAV icon .
The aircraft with the call sign PTNPNH1 was displayed on the map near Odessa, and later began to locate near the airport in Vinnytsia. PTNPNH2 flew from Dnipro towards the Kyiv region, and then turned towards the Cherkasy region.
