A few days ago when searching the BEA site for information on the Phase 3 search, I found an animation showing the tracks of a number of aircraft that flew northbound on either UN873 or UN866 between 0000z and 0300z. The animation was designed as a web application and for those using Firefox 3.5+ it can be found at -
Flight Paths of Flight AF 447 and of the flights that crossed the zone around the same time
The above animation shows a/c positions every 2.5 minutes (except AF447 - every 10 minutes), and uses Scalable Vector Graphics which allow the integration of 12 satellite images taken over the same 3 hour period. Individual aircraft/tracks can be selected, and the animation can be paused at any time.
Unfortunately, the application doesn't work in Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari or Opera. All is not lost, as further trawling of the BEA website revealed that a video had been made of the above, and though it doesn't provide the user interaction mentioned in the preceding paragraph, it can be paused. The video will play in the Windows Media Player and is at -
http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flig...ires010609.avi
This post is duplicated on the AF447 and AF447 Search to Resume threads as a matter of record.
mm43