I have been seeing strange id’ such as X9WB followed out of MAF and flight track stopped and it disappeared from screen. Followed one last night that seemed to tracking another ac from Hobbs to Midland, the AC appeared to make a mis-approach and it continued flight the strange identifier folled until it disappeared from track
Hi,
The one you just saw as Flight ID “X9WB” was the aircraft below.
N479WB
hex = A5E47F
B350
https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=N479WB
The flight profile matches what FA has for that. It departed what looks like a possible FBO refueling area on the west executive ramp next to hangar P at about 1348 UTC. It made a short hop up to Midland. I’m not sure why FA showed it with the strange Flight ID = X9WB. ADSBexchange seemed to track it fine. The aircraft was full ads-b. FA also seemed to show it with the actual registration. Sometimes when things like this happen it is because an aircraft is using an incorrect Flight ID. It also was likely on a VFR flight plan for such a short hop.
The full track, including ground track for this one is available at:
FA X9WB track:
FA N479WB track:
Regards,
-Dan
Thanks, that actually makes a lot of sense and partially explains the track yesterday of a strange x id following the track of a aircraft from hobbs to Midland
Hi,
Pure speculation, but often when two airports are so close together, they have a Letter of Agreement between them on how they pass traffic directly from one tower to another. That way an aircraft just going to the next tower doesn’t get passed to departure/approach and then to the next tower. My local military fields do it, and it’s called a “tower to tower”.
The aircraft was certainly VFR, and likely had no flight plan at all. That explains why FA didn’t match a flight plan with the aircraft track.
The FA track for X9WB was a FAA center track file, not a received ads-b track file.
The FA track for N479WB was the actual 1090 ads-b track file, received and uploaded by receivers in the area.
Just a guess, but possibly the local FAA procedure is for them to tag the FAA track as “X” or “X9WB” with part of the actual registration to identify it locally for them and the next tower. I’ve never seen anything like that locally, but if you see more “X” types, that might explain it.
Regards,
-Dan