Our Cessna 310 (N7527Q) took a trip up to VT yesterday. It was a 3 legged trip, from W75 to KFSO to KRUT and back to W75. The website tracked the flight from W75 to KFSO just fine. It also tracked the flight from FSO to RUT (VFR flight following), although it showed an enroute time of 2 minutes. The last leg, RUT to W75, was never followed however. The pilot told me that he picked up his IFR from Boston Center right after takeoff, and cancelled near SBY to avoid being re-routed away from some restricted airspace over the Chesapeake Bay. I was tracking the flight, and there was a track displayed on the map, but the flight info indicated that he never picked up his IFR clearance. I looked again this morning, and it shows that the last completed flight was the VFR leg from FSO to RUT.
I believe the most common root cause of this is ATC abbriavating the tail number when they put iit in the system. FA then has no way of tying the radar data to your full tail number.
I’m surprised we received information about the FSO-RUT flight; we usually only receive position points for VFR flights.
Was he on a local squawk (0xxx) for the last leg? That would explain the lack of flight plan/departure information, but I’m surprised we don’t have any position points for that leg.