someone explain this flight path to me
#1
Original Poster




Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: out my front door 60 min prior to IAH flight until they increased the check in time to 45 min
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someone explain this flight path to me
#2
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 133
If you read the papers and/or watch the news once in a while, you may have heard about Isaac - if not you may notice a really large system around STL on the image; that's Isaac. Maybe, just maybe, that had something to do with it.
#3
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Did you click on the link and look at the flight path? If correct (which I doubt), it is pretty bizarre.
#4
Moderator: United Airlines




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Does appear there may be spurious segment in the data, which is not unusually.
#5
Original Poster




Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: out my front door 60 min prior to IAH flight until they increased the check in time to 45 min
Programs: CO Platinum or UA 1K for so long, now almost 2MM
Posts: 322
A short while after taking off from St. Louis, the aircraft almost doubled back on itself then resumed in the general direction. I had never seen that before which is why I asked. And yes I knew about Isaac as I was on the next flight out of STL to IAH, which incidentally was quite smooth thanks to the excellent flight planning/navigation of the pilots
#6


Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: STL
Posts: 1,574
That back and forth just south of STL might be a FlightAware data error, I've seen that on FA before. If the aircraft actually did that, I would expect the flight time to be a lot longer than 1:52 which seems to be about average for an STL-IAH flight.
#7
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Two possible explanations:
A - the aircraft changes heading from 229 to 203 to 23 to 360 and speeds from 209 to 216 to 409 to 216mph all in less than a minute, requiring F16-like 9g acceleration, turning, and decelerating, exceeding all design parameters for a passenger plane
B - Data error
I'm going to go with B
A - the aircraft changes heading from 229 to 203 to 23 to 360 and speeds from 209 to 216 to 409 to 216mph all in less than a minute, requiring F16-like 9g acceleration, turning, and decelerating, exceeding all design parameters for a passenger plane
B - Data error
I'm going to go with B
#8
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Better link than yesterday's:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/U...506Z/KSTL/KIAH
Regardless, it might have been a data glitch.

