I just tracked a flight from KSBP to KBUR (AMF1941) all the way to KBUR using the displayed sectional. When I saw the aircraft just to the west of the airport, it looked like it would land on RWY8. But instead it actually headed a little south of the airport and the flight terminated at that point. Looking at the KBUR airport weather near the time of landng the winds were at 180 degrees. So the $64 question is, “What runway did AMF1941 use and how can this be determined using flight tracking?”
Maybe I can answer my own question! The track path and the sectional are not lined up accurately. There is some offset, which means that it landed on RWY8 anyway because that was the general direction.
Is this a correct assumption?
EMB145
I see the same thing sometimes, the aircraft passes up the airport, or heads off at an angle like it did a missed approach, then refresh the page and like magic, it landed moments ago?
It looks like they went in to runway 8.
Sometimes at the end of a flight the FAA sends us positions that correspond to the missed approach point; you can see those positions in the tracklog flightaware.com/live/flight/AMF1 … R/tracklog
If they come in after the arrival message we filter them out, but in this case they came in before the arrival message so we were unable to.
Also note there can be a bit of non-random position error in the radar returns; this is why some flights visible by multiple radar sites can have squiggly tracks. This explains the offset from the last good position to the runway.
