Flightradar24

[michael]

It seems a shame that Flybe's aircraft do not show up on flightradar or on the planefinder app. Does anyone know if it is Flybe's choice or is it just their aircraft that don't have the relevant technology? ( Lufthansa E190's do show up on flightradar)

Thanks in advance

 

[EX9]

According to the website they need the relevant transponder;
http://www.flightradar24.com/about.php

It also states that only the most recent E190's tend to show up.

 

[White Heather]

Out of interest, has anyone ever found aircraft disappearing from the FR24 website for no obvious reason?

Yesterday my 18 year old daughter was returning from a school trip to Barcelona, on the LS232Q (Jet2), operated by G-CELB (Jet2 Yorkshire). I followed her flight on FR24 from the Pyranees as far as the coast, just approaching Portsmouth. Directly behind, on the same flight path was the Jet2 Barcelona - Manchester flight.

After taking a phone call I went back to see where the flight had got to so that I could judge when to set off to pick her up. The Manchester flight was just passing overhead Portsmouth but the LS232Q had gone - completely. I used the filters to find it (using both the flight code and registration) and got a completely blank map, with no sign of the flight. I then used the LBA filter, with the same result.

No prizes for guessing what was going through my mind, but by pure chance when I was leaving work, CELB made a very short appearance through the clouds over Leeds at 1520, but it never re-appeared on FR24 once it cleared Portsmouth.

Ideas anyone? Scares like this I can do without!! :shok:

 

[a300boy]

I believe it uses inputs from people like me sharing the data from a personal SBS box. So if no one is supplying the information in a particular area the aircraft are just not painted on the screen until someone switches back on, or the aircraft reaches another sector where someone is supplying the SBS information to them again.

 

[White Heather]

Thanks A300boy, but there were other aircraft showing up all over the country and in the same areas that the LS232 should have been. The MAN flight was right behind it and remained visible. A mystery really.

 

[Aviador]

I remember the same happening to me once. It's a bit scary when you know people on board and a big relief when it reappears later on (usually) thank goodness.

 

[a300boy]

What flight Radar told me was that an area might have several SBS boxes feeding information at one time but maybe only one is picking up a specific aircraft and if that one is switched off or is blanked then the target aircraft will disappear even though others in the same area remain visible. My Sbs often looses aircraft downwind for runway 14 and picks them up again on a 4 mile final. Only other possibility I can think of is a transponder failure but ,as most modern commercial aircraft have two, its most unlikely especially as Atc would be letting you know.

 

[jfy1999]

There are a couple of questions I have about FR24

1. Why do most smaller planes only show up on the screen when they are quite high in the air? These include all props (apart from the newest ATR 72-600s like those owned by Aer Lingus Regional) and most small jets like Bombardier CRJ's and Embraer jets.

2. Why doesn't it know where some planes are going or coming from? A plane sometimes takes off and it doesn't show the destination, or departure airport, or both.

 

[Aviador]

I'm not entirely sure of the answer but could it have something to do with the transponder on those types of aircraft, after all, it's the transponder that provides all the information to Flightradar24 ?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Has anyone ever tried this one? It seems similar to FR24.

http://planefinder.net

 

[Aviador]

There are a few different ones out there. I think Flightradar24 has got to be the best one though and the one with the least bugs.

 

[Ray Finkle]

It could have been worse

 

[Brummiegem]

Hi all.
I'm having a problem with FR24.In fact I also have Planefinder which I am having the same problem with.
I am using an old i-padwith the original versions of both apps on it.The problem is they are both now refusing to load.Previously if either froze or did not work properly I would delete it and then reload them from the app store,from my own downloads page.
Usually this did the trick,although all previous alerts and preferences would have to be reloaded but otherwise it would work as before,and no problems,until now.
All my other apps are unaffected but both of these are just not working at all.
Anybody have any ideas???
It seems a bit bizarre that it is both plane radar apps that are affected,and nothing else?

 

[Aviador]

I have had a few problems of late with FR24. I get a message saying "server problem try later" and other times the map loads but the data doesn't. This could be a server problem too but I might be wrong.

 

[jfy1999]

I know FR24 update quite often, and one of the updates has seen them change their aircraft photo source from Planespotters to Jetphotos.

Jetphotos has more photos overall and a few more "arty" shots but also some very odd ones that probably wouldn't be rated "good quality" on Planespotters, and just the other day I saw that the aircraft photo on FR24 for Emirates 77W A6-ENF was actually a picture of a 77L, A6-EWF. I don't know how they managed to mess this up as there are plenty of pictures of A6-ENF on Jetphotos.

Also it means that some aircraft that had images on Planespotters are now only represented by CGI images on FR24 because there are no pictures of them on Jetphotos.

 

[jfy1999]

This VLM Fokker 50 has a bit of a glitchy flight path (a purple line indicates a plane flying between 30 and 40 thousand feet, anything higher is a red line)

 

[Aviador]

Well spotted jfy1999

Is it a VLM glitch or a FR24 glitch? I wouldn't like to be on the aircraft if it's a VLM glitch!

 

[jfy1999]

I think it might be a malfunctioning transponder? But then would ATC notice?

 

[jfy1999]

Here's why some long-haul flights take odd routes.

http://www.flightradar24.com/blog/fligh ... greenland/

 

[jfy1999]

Well, FR24 has very recently updated the format of its website, and I can't say I'm impressed with what I've seen so far...

At first it was all fine. The display looks a lot smarter, scrolling through the airport arrival/departure boards and selecting flights to track was a lot smoother. One minor quibble is that the new site only displays some flight data, like aircraft altitude and ground speed, for free. The old site, used to display other data like the aircraft's latitude and longitude, squawk, radar, and vertical speed (rate of ascent or descent). Now it appears these other data are behind a paywall.

However, after a few days using the new format (I use an iPad mini), I've come across multiple problems, none of which were there at first. The mobile website has started repeatedly crashing. The old version had its fair share of crashes, but nowhere like as often as the new version. The webpage automatically reloads after a crash, but I've found that after a crash the new version doesn't reload airport flight lists or even display aircraft on the map, meaning you have to close the tab and open a new one.

I found the most common cause of crashes on the old version was scrolling through lists or panning maps too fast, or trying to click on other flights when one flight was still loading, but now even doing nothing can cause a crash on the new version.

In addition, the airport flight lists don't show all the airlines' names. Some airlines only have their IATA code displayed, which looks like this:

Flight Airline
LH956 Lufthansa
ZB446 ZB
BE411 Flybe
FR1122 FR

Finally, last time I visited the website it wasn't even loading a photo of any aircraft I clicked on. I'm not willing to fork out money just to have a website that works properly—that should be the bare minimum requirement for any website, so I hope very much that this is a work in progress and these are only teething problems.