Non-motoring > Plane spotting Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Manatee Replies: 10
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 16:37 
 Plane spotting - Manatee
Flightradar 24 alert just caught my eye, as it is a flight my daughter has used, though not today.

BA49 from LHR to Seattle has just turned back north of the Outer Hebrides and looks to be heading for Glasgow or Prestwick.
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 16:58 
 Plane spotting - legacylad
A pilot friend put FR24 onto my Nokia Windows phone last summer and I had completely forgotten about it. It loads my position within seconds, but not a single aircraft shows up!
OTOH I have the Plane Finder app on my 'front page' as a separate tile and that works fine. Wonder why? Any suggestions please.
Glad to see BA49 is almost down safely.
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 17:04 
 Plane spotting - Manatee
Now shown on BA's updates as "connects in Glasgow", departing from there at 18.00. DOn't think that's what the drivers expected when they set off!

May be a bit of expedient flight combining, possibly some tech problems on another aircraft. I once got on a Norwegian flight from Stansted IIRC to Oslo, that turned south a few minutes after take-off to Beauvais to pick up some people they had stranded there earlier!
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 17:17 
 Plane spotting - legacylad
And I once got on a B Cal Tristar at MAN in early Jan to fly to the Caribbean. Touched down unexpectedly at Gatwick to pick up cabin crew for the return leg. When we flew home a week later had to refuel in the Azores due to a full payload. Only a handful of passengers on the outbound leg.
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 18:39 
 Plane spotting - Zero
FR24 is always going off with Mayday beacons and at least 4 flights a week declare emergencies and re-route.
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 20:48 
 Plane spotting - MD
Is FR24 the system or the flight and does this apply to a particular plane?
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 20:54 
 Plane spotting - Zero
Flight Radar is an app, that tracks all the commercial flights in a kind of world radar, and alerts you when one Squawks a mayday.
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 20:55 
 Plane spotting - MD
Noted Squire. Grassyarse.
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 21:37 
 Plane spotting - legacylad
Wish mine did. Waste of £1.99.

I know I know Z. should have got an Iphone.....
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 22:05 
 Plane spotting - rtj70
FR24 also very good on Android. The paid for version is more feature rich but there's also the free version.

First time I had an emergency alert I didn't know it was turned on and wondered what my phones was alerting me of. Soon turned that off.

The FR24 site is not perfect. It relies on people like us attaching a receiver to a PC and running some software to forward broadcasts from aircraft. So there are spots where aircraft vanish so to speak because nobody are providing updates to FR24.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 5 Feb 14 at 22:05
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New Wed 5 Feb 14 23:15 
 Plane spotting - Manatee
Today's diversion of BA49 was a medical emergency.
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