Flight Track Issues?

Recently I have noticed that flights will lose their flight track midway through the flight. The line just stops. Why is this? It appears to have started on about the 29th of January because I see one active and one non-active link for many flights. It wouldn’t be a problem if it was only a minority of flights that did this, but it looks like more than half and is very annoying.

Well, lines stop if the pilot cancels IFR, though I dont know if that was your issue.

What I’ve noticed over the last week or so is that the times simply are incorrect (e.g. it will say the flight has landed 3 hours ago in CA, but the image will show the plane in the correct place over NV).

Please check out UPS958, it “landed” yesterday 2 hours after its arrival. I’ve had to go to other flight tracking sites to determine ETAs for about a week now…

Thanks,
-K

In addition to the above, if the line stops close to the destination, there is a good chance there was a handoff from center to approach controller, and the input from the approach controller marks the flight as arrived which will terminate the tracking.

discussions.flightaware.com/view … ht=handoff

discussions.flightaware.com/view … ht=handoff

Allen

Besides flight tracks terminating before they are really done, I’ve noticed missing airplane icons at the ends of the tracks in the last couple of weeks. The line just ends. -Jan / CID region

Still lot of premature endings to tracks (then missing the airplane icon, also, usually) long before they are supposed to end. Only ran across one that was totally blank (CCP412/413 demonstrates both phenomena). FYI - Jan Iowa (about 12" of snow, mostly this morning, I’m not about to go anywhere just yet)

We’ve noticed the increase in errant early arrival messages over the last week or so, particularly for flights entirely within CONUS.

Yeah, all that…and something I noticed the other day…An Eagle flight from LAX had to go around due to rwy 27 minimums at SAN…but FA showed it had arrived right at that time. Yet, it was still tracking. The blue icon turned to green as it went over the water to shoot the ILS 9, and arrived that way…10 minutes after FA said it did.

When is Flight Aware supose to fix this problem the tracker quits half way thru the flight?

I got This email reponse back tonight:

This is caused by bad data from the FAA data feed. We are well aware of the
problem and are actively working on a fix for this problem. I am sorry that
this is creating difficulties in tracking aircraft.

Best regards,

Collin White
FlightAware

FlightAware is still a great value. 8)

Where do you see blue icon’s and green icons? On FlightAware?

Airport maps have blue and green aircraft icons to distinguish between aircraft going to/from an airport and aircraft just passing by.

ty

I noticed this too, on all these Midwest flights since about the end of January, such as this one:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MEP830/history/20080207/1440Z/KMKE/KPHX

when the problem gets resolved, are these tracks going to go the full way or are these flights’ tracks lost forever?

Even after the cancellation message we continue to receive position messages. Once we decide on a fix the old flights will be complete.

How long will that be?

The tracking information is being lost on Delta flight 650 from SFO to ATL as I type. Very odd. It actually shows the flight twice, once already having arrived and another with totally wrong times. The Delta web site seems to have correct info.

MDuell - Will that also help the terminated tracks of flights coming in from outside of the country? (from europe and hawaii, etc.) - Thnx Jan

All of the TRS flts MSP - MCO in the recent history have only taken 30 minutes or so. Go figure.

How long will this problem continue with the early arrival messages with flights that are still in the air, Mduell?