Commercial (SWA) flight track interrupted by bad ADS-B data

FlightAware General
1

Check this out:
flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA3 … X/tracklog

This is a Southwest flight from KHOU to KPHX that is still in the air as of this writing. Since I’m pretty sure my wife and child’s plane didn’t crash, then revive itself, overshoot the destination airport by two states, and then return to its route on time, all in the course of about 20 minutes, I have to assume that the ADS-B data that interrupted and was logged is incorrect. My question is, why would FA default to some random ADS-B data instead of sticking with the actual waypoint data, or alternatively, at least default to FA Approximate?

P.S. The flight just landed, so I am now less stressed, but still curious!

2

Looks like the flight data got merged with another fllight.
Tue 12:57:04 31.9103 -107.0183 278°
Tue 13:11:38 34.1829 -118.3544 191°
Tracking went from Albuquerque Center to Burbank & Van Nuys and back.
Either that or SWA has developed a Warp Drive.
Maybe someone’s Pi in So Cal was feeding bad data for a while.

3

There is another explanation in that the transponder got bad data from the on-board GPS receiver. There is a Beechcraft B200 based in Western IL that does this all the time ( I cannot recall the tail number ). When ever it shows up it bounces all over the map.