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> obscuring this flight's waypoint problem have resulted in a potentially conflicting flight not being tracked among other flights? Flights are tracked by rada
by akira2501 2y ago
> obscuring this flight's waypoint problem have resulted in a potentially conflicting flight not being tracked among other flights?
Flights are tracked by radar and by transponder. The appropriate thing to do is just flag the flight with a discontinuity error but otherwise operate normally. This happens with other statuses like "radio failure" or "emergency aircraft."
It's not something you'd see on a commercial flight, but a private IFR flight (one with a flight plan), you can actually cancel your IFR plan mid flight and revert to VFR (visual flight rules) instead.
Some flights take off without an IFR clearance as a VFR flight, but once airborne, they call up ATC and request an IFR clearance already en route.
The system is vouchsafing where it does not need to.
- CPLX 2y agoThis isn’t quite correct. The oceanic tracks do not have radar coverage and aren’t actively controlled. There are other fail safe methods of course all the way up to TCAS, but it’s not great for an oceanic flight to be outside of the system.
- cryptonector 2y agoThe appropriate thing to do was to reject the flight plan (remember, the flight plan is processed before the flight starts, and anyways there were hours over U.S. in which the flight could have been diverted if manual resolution was not possible), not to let the flight continue with the apparent discontinuity, nor to shutdown the whole system.
- CPLX 2y ago> flight plan is processed before the flight starts Not necessarily. Also they regularly change while the flight is in the air.