Question from a new guy

FlightAware General
1

I am new to the site and while looking at the live tracking page. The plane I am watching is not in the air. The map shows the last airport it left and arrived but now looking again there is a new icon in another state it is a blue plane icon with the tailnumber and 12^93 under it. Bu the plane is 2500 miles away. Any idea what this means? and 1 more wuestion does Flightadware show a new flight as soon as the flightplan is filed or once it is in the air?

2

what’s the tail number?

3

N1DC Owner of the Dallas Cowboys Jerry Jones’ plane

4

The N1DC you see up in the New York area is a VFR flight (note the lack of an equipment code) where the controller only entered the last 3 digits of the tail number (the actual tail number is Nxx1DC or Nx1DC).

5

What is a VFR Flight? So the VFR flight has nothing to do with the plane I am tracking correct?

6

FlightAware will show the next flight as **proposed/assigned **when the flight plan is filed then when it actually takes off (with the 6 minute delay) it will show as enroute Occasionally you will have more than one flight plan filed…the one now enroute and the return flight already filed and waiting.

7

In addition to the explanation mduell gave, if you go to the Track Log, you’ll see there are just 2 position reports one minute apart. Probably just a request for temporary radar tracking, but enough to wipe the Florida/Texas flight track off the map.

8

VFR is Visual Flight Rules…no IFR or Instrument Flight Plan filed. IFR is what FlightAware gets from the FAA.

9

VFR = Visual Flight Rules, generally transparent to FlightAware unless ‘flight following’ (radar tracking) is requested. No origin or destination is known.

IFR = Instrument Flight Rules, the heart of FlightAware’s track database. Positional data is supplied to FlightAware by the FAA with a minimum of 5-minute delay.

In this case, because aircraft type is not entered by the controllers, one would expect that the plane you saw is not Jerry’s N1DC. With the abbreviated callsign entered by controllers, it could be something like N251DC. We won’t ever find out.