Hello Flightwise!

I am trying to track a friends flight to no avail.  When I search his number (ACA875) it says it is blocked on flightwise.  However, when you go over to flightaware.com you can see it clearly and it is in Canadian Airspace.

Why is this happening?  It's been in Canadian Airspace for about 1hr20min and it shows it blocked.

Further examples I could find were DAL25.  It is currently over Pennsylvania but when you search it on flightwise it shows it blocked due to being in the UK.

I've paid for this service for over 5 years now and am becoming discouraged by the forcefulness that anything UK-airspace related is being blocked.

Is there any explanation for this at all? I can not figure out how a free website has been more reliable than this paysite.

Hey there! Try clicking this link: http://flightwise.com/track/ACA875

That flight isn't blocked, and I just tried it from here and it went through fine. I suspect maybe you might have made a typo when entering the flight ID, or something along those lines?

If you're still having troubles, contact Customer Service via service@flightwise.com...!

Ok; in looking at the flight a little more, I see that it's coming from Europe, and at the time you were trying to track it, it may very well have been being tracked by the UK radar facilities.

Believe me, if we could provide access to that data, we would - but the UK aviation authorities and the FAA are both very strict with the release of that data, and we're simply not allowed to display it.

PS: The basic flight tracking services are free on Flightwise, just like most of the other sites available today.

I have the 9.95 pay account.   Was using Flightaware and full data showed up for it (ALT and LOCATION).

Check a bunch of the US East Coast arrivals.  Even over Canada and in some instances the USA it shows it as not in the flight area.  Just searched DLH422 and had the same error.

Been a paying member since 2005 and never have run into issues like this.

Here is what I am talking about.  Another example.

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/20/dal79.jpg

Do you need the $9.95 account? If you're tracking basic flights, you may very well not need the subscription level. As for the other flight you mentioned; most of the other sites will "guestimate" a flight path for the restricted areas based on its filed flight plan. We don't go that far yet, but once the flight enters US/Canadian airspace, we do begin to plot the actual flight path of the flight.

For an example of that, you can take a look at the flight you mentioned here (which has now obviously long since landed):
http://flightwise.com/track/62656505

Again, if the last known position for the flight was from the UK radar facilities, we won't be able to show anything until we actually start seeing the first radar position reports from a non-UK radar facility.

I do a lot of database work for virtual airlines, compiling flightplans for FMC data so theiairport search feature is a must. Don't get that with the free service.

As for the website guesstimating, with my example it is not. Flightaware will grey out a plane and put ESTIMATE once the flight is outside reporting areas. It was in Canadian airspace in this instance. I had several that were over TEXAS and it was still saying it was outside of US/Canadian airspace. And the strangest part is, it will only do it to some planes.

agreen:

Do you need the $9.95 account? If you're tracking basic flights, you may very well not need the subscription level. As for the other flight you mentioned; most of the other sites will "guestimate" a flight path for the restricted areas based on its filed flight plan. We don't go that far yet, but once the flight enters US/Canadian airspace, we do begin to plot the actual flight path of the flight.

For an example of that, you can take a look at the flight you mentioned here (which has now obviously long since landed):
http://flightwise.com/track/62656505

Again, if the last known position for the flight was from the UK radar facilities, we won't be able to show anything until we actually start seeing the first radar position reports from a non-UK radar facility.

For the overseas portion of the flight in your example, notice that the path is a dotted line - that portion of the flight is what's fudged.

If you could do me a favor; can you create a ticket and send me a couple of examples of flights (I already have the ones you mentioned here) so I can do some deeper digging to isolate what the issue might be?

flightaware is showing the following route for AFR17 (departs in 45 mins):

HAPIE YAHOO BRADD N61B VIXUN LOGSU 4950N 5040N 5130N 5120N DINIM ELSOX RATKA UN502 JSY UY111 INGOR UM25 DVL

flightwise is showing the following route for AFR17:

This flight is outside our coverage area


I don't know what the problem is, but I'm not sure it's a restriction. You can track AFR17 for tonight and see if it really does follow that route (input the route on simroutes.com to see what it looks like). As for "guestimating," this is typically done for westbound transatlantic flights, in which flightaware usually displays a route that's been used for the previous day. This is usually not the case for the eastbound transatlantic flights.

Check out the following link:

http://www.fly.faa.gov/ASDI/asdidocs/ASDI_MOA_01Jun06.pdf

It is the agreement we have to sign with the FAA - as well as all flight tracking vendors who get data from them. Take a look for yourself to see what it says about the UK data :) I can't speak to the legalities of other websites. I can tell you, though, that the route you pasted in your example is not current. I have access to the current flight plan and it's slightly different.

I should add, all of this will be a moot point with us in the near future, as we're about to change the way we do things (I can't say anything else on that, I'm afraid). Suffice to say that things will be cooler.

I don't know, man. That document is dated from 2006, and I have read a few forums that mention these same problems, but they were dated from 2005 to 2007 and possibly later.

The last time that I used flightwise for westbound transatlantic flight plans was in January of this year. In January, there were no issues; I was able to access flight plans that were filed with LLON a couple of hours prior to departure. Now, there are issues, and I can't see any flight plans. Before January (2005, 2007, etc.), there were also issues relating to this, and the reasoning for those issues was the same that you bring up now. It doesn't make any sense.

As for the flightaware flight plan, the NAT track is current for today, so that was the current route when it was filed, but routes get updated, of course. Also, I was looking at other eastbound transatlantic flights earlier today, and those routes were available on flightwise. AFR17 is currently in the air, but flightwise still shows that it's outside of the coverage area.

flightradar24.com allows you to see traffic all over Europe, along with the squawk codes and aircraft registration. flightaware also allows you to track airplanes in the London airspace just as if they were being tracked in the US.

Think of a guy with a gun that can't shoot; each bullet represents a flight tracking problem. Due to the fact that he can't shoot, the bullets hit their targets randomly. Each hit means that people will have problems trying to track flights. When he misses, there are no problems, and everyone is happy. This is what it looks like on my end.

I'm not trying to bust your balls, just giving you as much information as I've noticed. As far as the "things will be cooler," just fix the issue and let people see the flight plans from the UK. Perhaps, even flight plans from Asia and stuff. :)

Thanks for the help so far, it is much appreciated.

As the previous user stated, this is always hit and miss. There are instances where I assume the strangeness will occur. There are other times that it happens when you least expect it.

I know Flightwise has been talking about these "better" things to come for over a year now. Is there any update on the timeline? I'm sure you can't say what is up, but are we talking about 1 month? 6 months?

Let me know if I can send live info as it is happening. If I send the example now and you don't get it for a few hours it won't do us much good!

Thanks a ton

Andrew

agreen:

Check out the following link:

http://www.fly.faa.gov/ASDI/asdidocs/ASDI_MOA_01Jun06.pdf

It is the agreement we have to sign with the FAA - as well as all flight tracking vendors who get data from them. Take a look for yourself to see what it says about the UK data :) I can't speak to the legalities of other websites. I can tell you, though, that the route you pasted in your example is not current. I have access to the current flight plan and it's slightly different.

I should add, all of this will be a moot point with us in the near future, as we're about to change the way we do things (I can't say anything else on that, I'm afraid). Suffice to say that things will be cooler.

No, I actually don't mind talking geek about all of this... and I really do appreciate your feedback. I definitely acknowledge we have some shortcomings in a lot of areas, and we're actively working on bringing everything here up to snuff... so hearing your gripes is exactly what I'm looking for... I just feel a little bad in the sense that there are a FEW things that are simply beyond our control.

We go through an annual audit every year, and we're required to have a current, signed copy of the MOA each year. The 2006 one you saw is the most recent document. The issue with the UK-based flight plans is that, essentially, up until earlier this year (or it may have been the end of last year, I can't remember exactly)... some cross-Atlantic flight plans - even though they ended up or started in the UK - were sent out with a US-based radar facility as the "source" facility. I think the UK folks must have complained, because eventually the FAA changed that such that those flight plans are now being sent out with the LLON radar facility ID, which puts them under the "restricted" category.

At present, we get all of our data solely from the FAA... but there are other, expensive sources for some of the flight routing data. There are also FREE sources of the UK and European data, but they are often unreliable and sparse. We're working towards combining multiple sources to help make up for the shortcomings of each.

As for seeing data from Asia and other continents; the main problem there is that most countries either lack the technical capability or the political will to share their flight tracking data. For example, Mexico uses the same system as the US and Canada, but their data is restricted such that NOBODY gets access to it. At least the UK facilities are available to users who pay landing fees and/or operate aircraft within Europe.

Thanks for the response :) Definitely puts this all into prospective then. Kind of sucks that this has to happen as I just use the data for flight simulation. But I understand.

So is there a chance we will see some new data coming soon? Whether it be asia, or europe? Because that would be awesome.

Also, do you have a general eta for all of this?

Thanks so much!