Is FlightAware starting to miss a bunch of intl'l arrivals?

**pgengler** · 2008-03-13, 01:46 PM

After not taking today off to go spotting, I'm sitting at work listening to the JFK tower feed and occasionally taking a look at FlightAware to see what I'm missing. What I'm seeing is that FA seems to be missing some of the international arrivals. British Airways 1503 just landed a couple of minutes ago, but FlightAware doesn't have any record of the flight being flown since March 8, with a couple of other gaps back to March 1. Before that it's shown daily.

Aer Lingus 105 is another one (I'm checking to see if I can figure out which one is operating with the DC-10 today). Nothing on this one back to March 8, then Mar. 5, Mar. 1, then daily for February again. What's stranger about this one is that when I looked at the Aer Lingus fleet page on FA, it showed the flight on the map but not in the list.

Does anyone know what's going on?

**moose135** · 2008-03-13, 03:27 PM

If you look on a page for an individual international flight, it says:

At least part of this flight occurs outside of FlightAware's service area. Information on this page may be unreliable.

Also, from their FAQ page:

How does FlightAware handle international flights?

Short answer: Not very well.

Long answer: FlightAware can only track aircraft that are being tracked by the FAA, which means aircraft only in the United States. For flights arriving in the US from an international origin, FlightAware will be able to track the flight once it is handed off to the US. For flights departing the US for an international destination, FlightAware will be able to track the flight until it leaves the US and then it will be lost with no arrival ever recorded or the arrival time will be the time it left the US.

**pgengler** · 2008-03-13, 03:34 PM

I know that it won't show a full track for internationals, but in the past it's been pretty good about picking them up. Taking British Airways 1503 as the example, FlightAware has it listed every day in February, every day in January, every day in December, and so on. For March, though, they've only got March 1, March 5, and March 8. The Aer Lingus flight was the same way, with daily listings up to March 1, then the same gaps. I heard both of them on JFK tower so I know they came in today, but FlightAware has no record of either flight except for 5 days ago.

Basically, they say that they pick up tracking once the flight enters the US, but it's missing these.

**hiss srq** · 2008-03-13, 04:38 PM

I noticed that too. I shot one flight that did not show up this morning. Iceair 757 freighter.

**Lezam** · 2008-03-13, 07:39 PM

Flightaware hasnt only been bad with intl flights lately, domestic flights have also been iffy. Quite a few flights have just stopped parsing, or shown wrong information. They blames it on the faa feed though, so it seems to be beyond their control.

**Mateo** · 2008-03-14, 12:15 AM

Flightaware has been very spotty over the last two weeks or so. It looks like there's a data hiccup when handing off to certain Centers, and it's doing odd things like triggering early arrivals, causing multiple records for the same flight, and messing with the scheduled arrivals and departures listings.