Mystery Flight/Ghost Image

FlightAware General
1

Okay. I know it’s April 1st, and it’s 10:15 pm MST (Arizona) time.

I have a plane on screen out of KPHX heading westbound west of the airport when all of the other traffic is landing to the east (from the west).

When I clicked on the image I got this page flightaware.com/live/flight/COPPER6 Supposedly this flight took place in 2005.

(EDIT: eleven minutes later) I now have a helicopter image on the screen. Here’s the page I got: flightaware.com/live/flight/N352FB As I post this that flight ended 21 hours ago.

I don’t see this kind of thing enough to know.

Thanks.

2

A “plane on screen” on what screen / webpage?

3

I,too, have an active airport activity map with numerous “ghost” ships. For instance, the current DFW map has ten different “ghosts” images with flights that occurred months or years ago. It is not limited to DFW but on most any screen pulled up.

4

I looked at KDFW but could not find any flights shown on the map that were months old. Do you have a specific example (and ideally a screenshot)?

edit: I can reproduce something like this if I turn off position-only flights. The airport map continues to show position-only flights, but if you select one then you get a flight page for the last filed flight (since the position-only setting is off) and that might be very old. So the flights are real, not ghosts, but it looks like an issue with the position-only filtering not being effective.

edit^2: and some of those position-only flights are stale from Friday (TIL that today isn’t the 31st) so more than one thing is going on here…

5

Sorry about that.

Here’s the webpage: flightaware.com/live/airport/KPHX

The funny thing is whenever I refreshed the page the “ghost” images would start again and make teh same movement across the area.

A couple of the helicopter images belong to either the City of Phoenix or Maricopa County AZ, and we do have the Final Four event happening this weekend, but the aircraft and the Final Four events don’t seem to connected.

Thanks again.

6

The info below comes up on a ghost image at the current LGA radar flightaware.com/live/airport/KLGA. The ghost is located east of LGA and immediately south of Long Island.

N3071D
LANDED OVER 6 YEARS AGO
Weather: 07-Sep-2010 05:35PM CDT
100 km50 mi
Activity Log
NO FLIGHTS IN THE LAST 14 DAYS

BUF BUFFALO, NY
LDJ LINDEN, NJ
TUESDAY 07-SEP-2010 05:38PM EDT
TUESDAY 07-SEP-20100 7:39PM EDT

7

Interesting. Thanks.

At least now I know I’m not the only one with these weird events on my screen.

If I had any talent as a writer of fiction I could probably come up with a story and these “ghost” images.

Any authors of fiction out there? I gotta mystery plot idea for ya… :smiley:

8

That is another example of a position-only flight from the 31st

9

Thanks for the follow up. I just checked and found eight “position only” flights on the ATL radar, one of which is a small fixed wing in the center of one of the major weather cells. I would suggest that historical position only flights do not value to the current information presented on the radar shots.

10

Yeah, it’s a bug that they’re showing up - for some reason there’s a patch of data from the 31st that is not getting expired correctly.