18,000 fpm descent in track log ?

RE: AAL 2479 , 17 MAY 2007 , Hartford KBDL ] to Austin [KAUS]:

The tracklog for this flight shows a descent at approx 7 min after takeoff from Hartford from 40,000ft to 21,700 ft over a one minute interval.

Is this a bug with the tracklog feature or is it a possible recording/data error from ARINC ?

Thanks,
Ed

Welcome to FlightAware efbrady.
Try to include a link to whatever flight you may be talking about in the future, makes it easier for everyone to find it :slight_smile:
The flight in question: flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL2 … W/tracklog
It could be either an ARINC mishap, or an FA bug, or maybe even an incomplete radar hit where the altitude wasn’t picked up, which is what I think happened here. When that happens, it tends to choose the filed final altitude. In this case, it was FL400. Notice that it went from 15,500 to 40,000 to 21,700. I’m going to guess they were at about 18,500-19,000 for that radar sweep.
A while ago, it was happening quite a bit where it showed either the filed final, or zero. I believe that bug was resolved some time ago.

mduell/staff…
flightaware.com/live/flight/N258 … /KSEE/KWHP
Altitude shows up on the tracklog, but shows zero on the map.

Edit:
the map refreshed and now 6100’ shows.

Looks okay to me…

When a flight is assigned a new altitude, sometimes the FAA’s systems will tell us the assigned altitude is the current altitude for a minute, then go back to normal

We’ve suppressed the bogus altitudes from the beginning and end of flights, but we’re still working on the best way to suppress the mid-flight assigned altitudes.