Originally Posted by
MrSnuggles
I am sorry but...
PLEASE everybody, Flightradar24 is a nifty little gadget but it is no way useful for investigative purposes.
ManaAdaSystems says approx the same thing as me here:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post8813007
FR24 bases its flightpaths on some signals from the actual plane and some calculations about its supposed position IF the airplane uses the same heading, speed and altitude as lats actual data point.
This is why you can see big deviatons if you zoom in around an airport - planes going straight that suddenly makes huge sidesteps. Fact is, it never did a sidestep, it flew according to its own plan, not FR24's algorithms.
All you can do with FR24 therefore, is to use it as an app that gives you a possible trend when the aircraft is in cruise. These are too many maybes to be taken as evidence if something truly occurs.
Just to point out - I would propose using the
ADS-B output from aircraft which has a LOT more information than that retained by third party flight trackers like FR24 and FlightAware etc. whose use is easy by ad hoc fora like this but is not necessarily accurate as it probably collates inputs from several sources. The
officially recorded ADS-B information will be available in several ATC facilities and could extremely simply provide a detailed trajectory of the aircraft. Given a detailed trajectory with half second 3D positions what happened to the aircraft would be a lot more apparent.