Your FAQ state "*Why are planes moving on maps?
As part of FlightAware Live, whenever you see a plane logo on a map beneath the pan and zoom controls, you’re seeing new positions of aircraft as quickly as we can get them to you, without the need to refresh the page.*"
I don’t think this is correct. I’ve been looking at this display quite intensively, concentrating upon the south of England and the English Channel. I’d assumed the display showed live info for flights there in the air, and that movements of planes were in response to fresh information. But I now think that what actually happens is that when the page loads it has the latest info about planes in the air, their heading and speed. Thereafter client javascript in the browser mechanically moves the planes on their heading and speed, without reference to any fresh info from flightaware. After a few minutes, the javascript refreshes the screen, and the cycle then repeats with newer info. (I can see why this is done: to reduce server loading if lots of people are looking at this page.)
What alerted me to this is the following screen clip: brisk.org.uk/pics/fa_wrongway.JPG
It shows a plane supposedly flying from LEAL to EGHI but it is actually flying away from EGHI. I watched this for a while and then, when the browser refreshed, the plane went back to EGHI and repeated its southerly trip! This was on July 22nd, and clicking on the plane showed that it had actually landed at EGHI on July 20th. I think what was happening was that the last track points FA had for this plane were it landing from the north at EGHI. These track points were wrongly included in the live display two days later (bug #1 IMHO). The client javascript then mechanically moves the plane further south, failing to notice that it had in fact landed at the airport (bug #2 IMHO).
