Emirates flight EK 1 DXB - LHR

[timgill]

I met a couple friends at Heathrow this morning who had travelled on this flight. I tracked it on Flightstats to check it was going to be on time (which it was) and noticed that while flying north-westwards over Iraq it turned around over the Thermal Lake northwest of Baghdad, flew south-eastwards quite a long way towards the southwest of Baghdad, and then turned again to continue its journey along the flight path it had just taken.

My friends were unaware of this manoeuvure as they were asleep at the time.

I was wondering what was the reason for this. I also saw from the flight log that the speed reduced considerably, from 640 kts to 440 kts in a matter of minutes. The altitude, however, remained the same at 38000 feet.

[DaveReidUK]

Any track that, like this one, shows instantaneous 90° turns is deeply suspect. It's also very unlikely that the groundspeed reached 640 kts at any stage during the flight.

I suspect the reason that your friends didn't notice those wild manoeuvres is that they didn't happen.

[PAXboy]

timgill If you look up information (and threads in PPRuNe) on the various tracking sites, you will understand that what is shown as a line or turn, is often just the computer making a guess. Over sparsely populated areas, there is not sufficient data to give accurate tracking and if the network 'sees' the aircraft 'jump' from one receiver to another with a larg gap between - then it may show this kind of 'track'. These sights are good OVERALL but their specifics of height/speed/heading are not to be taken literally.

[timgill]

Thank you both. That pretty well explains it!

[PAXboy]

Glad to help. Sometimes, when there has been a crash, people are posting that 'FR24 shows the aircraft lost 5,000ft in two minutes and then climbed another 2,000 feet back up'. It ain't necessarily so!