Did this airliner land in the North Sea? [News Article]

Aviation Aviation News
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Just saw this article from the Register: Did this airliner land in the North Sea? No. So what happened? El Reg probes flight tracker site oddity • The Register

tl;dr On 15 Sep 20 G-JOTR was seen on FR24 and stopped showing a track in the sea to the East of Scotland. No one noticed and no emergency was declared. Turns out the ac has a poorly inertial reference system which gives out incorrect data.

FA track for the flight can be seen here if interested (also looks dodgy): https://flightaware.com/live/flight/GJOTR/history/20200915/1446Z/EGMC/L%2056.50929%20-2.33118

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Which gives us evidence to not rely on a single source only.

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Not “poorly”. It has an older INS nav system which feeds the position but it drifts over time.

In the past, I have seen old Boeing 767 “land” a mile north of EGLL with no-one concerned. Real radar showed there was no problem. I suspect most of those have now retired. Just a few oldies with INS still flying.

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that fact that INS worked at all is a total miracle! imagine going into your boss and saying “i’ve got this idea for some gyros that will allow us navigate around the world”!

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Submarines use INS and generally don’t have issues.