Originally Posted by CPRich

What could cause the glitch? Bad data. That can happen at any point from the acquisition to presentation phases of the data's lifecycle. FA could put some data cleansing/range validation logic in place, but it's obvious/innocuous enough that the don't bother, apparently. Errors also occur when data is "Flight Aware" sourced - estimated, ADS-B, etc - i.e., not real ATC data.

(or perhaps it's not obvious - I remember a thread where someone was worried that a flight dropped 4,000 feet in a minute and climbed back to the original level a minute later, all in the cruise phase of flight. They though the turbulence must have been really severe)

EDIT: I just noticed this flight reported an 11,000 ft/min climb. Impressive, from a 738.