Cargojet 727 in distress? Weird flight path- what happened?

Aviation Notable Activity
1

Hey guys,

I noticed a 727 operated as Cargojet Flight 325 from Vancouver Int’l (CYVR) to Abbotsford Int’l (CYXX) turned back around for some reason, and even descended to 300ft and 400ft at two separate points in the middle of nowhere while seemingly “holding”. Can anyone figure out what might have been going on with this flight?

The flight is here:
flightaware.com/live/flight/CJT3 … /CYVR/CYXX

The flight data:
flightaware.com/live/flight/CJT3 … X/tracklog

16 minutes into the flight, the aircraft descended from cruise of 4000ft to 300ft, then quickly ascended up to 3000ft, turned around, and descended back down again to 400ft (25 minutes into the flight) before ascending back up to 4000ft before landing at 4:43pm PST. By mapping the latitude and longitude coordinates i determined these two points to be at:

On an actual map, the points are here. As you can see, the points are well below the airport. The aircraft was traveling East at 300ft and 400ft respectively when it descended at these two points.

Can anyone tell me what happened to this flight? Why would the aircraft descend to 300 and 400ft in the middle of nowhere before turning back to the departure airport? I listened to the liveATC recording during takeoff and eventual landing from Vancouver and there was no mention of an emergency when the pilots communicated with the ground. Unfortunately liveATC doesn’t cover Abbotsford so i couldn’t listen as the aircraft was in it’s hold and descending during those two points.

Any help is appreciated!

2

Since the aircraft originated from the area of the two points, I would assume the 300/400 feet corrospond to the approach/low pass/ go-around, from the runway it took off from, and that there is an overlay issue that has the track and the google maps out of register.

Nothing weird here to me.

3

I agree with spinner, the low points were most likely over the runway.
Just a guess:
On approach to Abbotsford they had one landing gear light not come on or a red light stayed on so they did a circle or two to troublshoot then did a low pass over the runway to let the tower have a look. Since we didn’t read about an accident the gear must have been down but the crew wisely elected to return to the long runway at YVR and for maintenance.

4

Cargojet does not operate into Abbotsford, so I’d surmise this was simply a training or test flight.