I filed a pop-up IFR for N206SV last night from a point near Farmington, NM to a point near Santa Fe, NM. Prior to that I was using VFR flight following. I do not see any flight information about that flight and I’m curious why that is.
We often don’t get the usual messages (flight plan, departure, etc) for a pop-up IFR flight, and thus they don’t make it in the system.
In the long term we’re working on making the system smarter, but for now pop-up clearances only make it in some of the time.
Hey Rbremmer,
Check out flightaware.com/about/faq.rvt#popupifr for handling of pop ups.
In my own experiences, I have never seen any of my pop up IFR flights get posted to my tail number.
Allen
I have a quick question, they say that flights that have vfr flight following show up but does the flight path show up if you check that specific aircraft? For instance, on July 29th I picked up flight following twice in KSU13(once through Kansas City and once through St. Louis) but if I type in that tail number it doesn’t show that path through either area. If I was to see this path would I have had to look at Kansas City’s map at that time?
If you did not file a VFR flight plan, but just got flight following, you won’t be picked up here in Flight Aware. If you filed a VFR flight plan, it really is hit and miss as to whether you were tracked (more missed). If you get a pop up IFR, it is hit or miss (more missed).
From my experiences, filing an IFR flight plan is the only way you can pretty much bet you will be tracked reliably by Flight Aware.
Allen
Filing a VFR flight plan will not have any impact on being tracked in FlightAware. We only receive IFR flight plans.