Emergency squawks now show on the map
A transponder has a four-digit code, and three of those codes mean something specific. 7700 is a general emergency, 7600 is a radio failure, and 7500 is unlawful interference. Our receivers hear all three. Until today the only place they showed up was a red line on the card of the aircraft you happened to tap, so finding the one plane that mattered meant tapping planes until a card said so.
What changed
On both maps (the one in the game and the one at /map), an aircraft with an alert code is drawn in red, ringed, with the code in a badge above it. It is drawn after every other aircraft, so a busy sky around an airport cannot hide it, and its callsign is always labelled even when the map has turned labels off for density.
At the top of the map a red strip lists the aircraft squawking right now: the code, the callsign and the model. Tap a line and the map centres on that aircraft and opens its card, the same as tapping the icon. Up to three are listed; any more show as a count.
On /live the ⚠ Alerts tab now says where each aircraft was when its code was confirmed (nearest city and altitude), carries a red LIVE badge while the same code is still being squawked, and links to the map with that aircraft selected. The tab covers the last three days.
What counts
A code has to hold across two of our minute-long sweeps before anything turns red. People change codes by turning knobs, and going from 7000 to 7600 can pass through 7500 for a second. One sweep of a code is far more often that, or a decoding glitch, than the real thing. Aircraft on the ground are not flagged, and military aircraft are never flagged.
When the transponder declares an emergency without the matching code, the line says EMERGENCY instead of SQUAWK, and declared states without a code (minimum fuel, for example) show in words.
What we do not say
The map prints the code and nothing else. We see what was dialled, not why. A 7700 can be a sick passenger, and most 7500s heard anywhere are mistakes. So there is no "hijack" and no "emergency landing" anywhere on these surfaces.
If you don't know the codes by heart, tap the ⓘ next to one: in the strip over the map, on the aircraft card on a phone, or next to the line in the Alerts tab. It explains what the code is for in general (7600 is a radio failure, and the crew follows a set procedure) and says plainly that this is the meaning of the code, not a report on that aircraft.
The Discord #squawk channel is unchanged: it still posts only 7700 and 7600 that the crew dialled. 7500 stays on the map and the Alerts tab and does not ping anyone.
All of this comes from the volunteer receivers that feed the network. If there is no red ring over your area when you expect one, it may be that nobody hears that sky yet. Feeding takes a few minutes to set up.