Missing Flight - Ukraine Air Alliance An-12

#1

I know it might not be unexpected to have a few issues tracking 60’s era aircraft that haven’t filed flight plans, however, MSP got a visit from an An-12 today, UR-CGV, and I can’t find any data on FlightAware about the flight - I’m wondering if you might have stale info in your database for their transponder, or something, maybe? Data for it from some of the other providers is a bit sketchy too, but, some data does show up on ADS-B Exchange:

https://flight-data.adsbexchange.com/map?icao=508191&date=2018-06-23

They were even able to pull a flight number out of it somehow - UKL505 - no idea if it’s accurate or not, but, there it is. Seems like that should have at least been enough for some ad-hoc / position-only data to come in via FXML, enough to get info for an arrival and departure, anyways.

Any idea what the issue might have been? I’m curious, as are my customers who hope to get alerts on flights being flown by cool aircraft like that. Thanks!

#2

Perhaps the aircraft was tracked in MLAT

#3

The aircraft was tracked using MLAT and not all flights tracked via MLAT create a position-only flight.

#4

Would be interesting to know what logic goes into that behind the scenes that determines what takes enough to give an MLAT flight a position-only flight record; with the ADS-B coverage you guys have around MSP (including a feed I host), surely there’d have been enough data to note the arrival and departure at MSP, even if after the fact. I understand my application is a bit of a fringe case compared to most consumers, but it’d be appreciated if that threshold could be adjusted a bit.

#5

We have had two in Perth lately as well (MLAT)

#6

About logic… for example UAVGH000


and one real track-
MLAT20180115_%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B5%20%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5
MLAT20180115_черное море.jpg1640x820 295 KB

#7

Our requirement is currently that we will not launch tracking for a flight based only upon MLAT information, although MLAT positions can be incorporated into a flight that matches with supporting information from other definitive sources (ADS-B, airlines events, radar, satellite datalink, etc).

This restriction is currently in place because of the higher amount of “noise” and erroneous messages that tend to exist with MLAT and Mode-S only aircraft. This is particularly a problem in parts of the world where Mode-S aircraft operators are not in the habit of actually setting Mode-S identifiers to their flight callsign due to lack of enforcement.

#8

That seems entirely reasonable, frustrating as it may be.

Thanks!