trace files and identifying flights by aircraft

Hi,

I am trying to understand a bit about the "trace" data and was hoping someone could explain if it is what I am looking for. I am trying to get historic data, say over a certain time period, in a certain geographic box, broken by icao, and for each icao I would like an array of "segments" that are composed of transponder detections. The idea is to analyze flights for each aircraft, and to base the analysis on the duration and area of each time the aircraft was flown.

I see the trace files have this kind of format:

{ icao: 845f9f
trace [
[time, lat, long, altitude, speed, track, ...] //first transponder detection
[time, lat, long, altitude, speed, track, ...] //second transponder detection
[time, lat, long, altitude, speed, track, ...] //third transponder detection
...
]
}

This is pretty close to what I am looking for, but I dont see a way to determine where one set of traces ends and another begins. What happens if an aircraft lands and takes off again? What happens if it goes out of transponder network range and gets picked up again later by another transponder?

Is there a better way to get data on aircraft, and the duration and area of each of their flights ?

Thanks,

 

Thanks, but I am looking for a way to do this in bulk -- through the API or files -- not through the web interface. I may become a commercial user, but trying to understand if what I want is possible through the data first. Is there a way to process something like the trace files ? I understand the limitation they are for each icao per 24 hour period, so not exactly the same set to start with.