I’ve had two occasions where a flight airborne shows progress on the time bar but shows no track or enroute lat/long/alt readouts. Why? Then after the flight is complete, you may get a displayed track.
Check out N26CX. On the SRQ to SRC leg (which it is about halfway right as I post this), it shows no ground track or radar hits, yet shows progress on the time bar.
Mike C.
Using the same flight above as of 17:21Z, the same is happening on my computer. I use Opera if that makes any difference.
My initial thought was to clear the cache files, but that didn’t resolve the problem, so at least people know Mike is not alone with this problem.
Track does not show up in the large map. Tracklog is non existent, so that appears to be the root of the problem?
Allen
We received a departure message for the flight, but we haven’t received any position messages for the flight. Probably an issue with the FAA computers, but it could be an inop transponder.
We received a departure message for the flight, but we haven’t received any position messages for the flight. Probably an issue with the FAA computers, but it could be an inop transponder.
The previous time it happened, there was no track, no tracklog, and my transponder was operative. After I landed, the track appeared on map and the tracklog had hits. This was this flight:
flightaware.com/live/flight/N100 … /KSRQ/KEVV
I am positive that when N26CX lands, he will report his transponder is operating normally.
So how is it that FAA computers can deliver the track to you after the flight lands? And how is it that you can generate the time progress bar and provide landing notification if you don’t have position messages?
My suspicion is that something at FA is not properly matching the transponder code with the flight and somehow this gets “fixed” at the end.
Anyway, this creates anxiety for those tracking our flights, they aren’t sure we’re still flying!
Mike C.
Interestingly most of the previous flights for this aircraft don’t show a track or it is incomplete as well!
I’ll look into the previous flight (and this one if the track appears after landing) to see what happened there. I can assure it’s not an issue with matching transponders to flights, since we do not receive the transponder code.
Even without the map display, the ETA may be updated if it changes; it depends where along in the chain the problem is for this flight.
Presuming you are talking about N26CX, only for the two very short SRQ ↔ BOW flights. I thought this was just that the flights were too short for FA. I notice that FA often truncates the end of long flights. After a while, the tracklogs get shortened.
Look at the rest of N26CX flights, they all have tracks. Look at N1000F, it has tracks and in at least one case, those tracks were not displayed during the flight.
But it is curious that the last 3 flights for N26CX have no tracks. Hmm.
Mike C.
Just noticed that the “Actual/Estimated” data block in the lower right corner of the data block next to the map has current airspeed and altitude and it is changing during the flight! Over the last 5 minutes, the airspeed has changed to 150, 152, 155 knots, the altitude 12200, 11600, 11000 as he descends.
Aha! So you do have the data! You are just not displaying the track or storing it in the tracklog.
I bet this is some sort of file/memory allocation bug to store the data and associate it with the live page.
Mike C.
Now has a track and tracklog! I’m not making this up!
I captured screen shots during the descent showing the lack of track but changing airspeed and altitude. When he canceled IFR, the status line said “no recent position” which implied it had one before. About 10 minutes after landing, it displayed the track and has track history.
I can send you the screen captures if you want them. I have 18 screen captures over about 40 minutes.
Mike C.
I saw what happened, no need for the screenshots.
Let me know if you see any other flights like this.
We may have identified the bug causing this. Please email me (mark.duell@flightaware.com) if you see another flight like this so I can check to see if the fix works.