Weird Flight Path over Michigan
 

I know Flight aware often has inaccuracies in it's data, however I don't think this one is inaccurate. But it is however very odd. Thoughts what was going on at midnight over Michigan?

Maybe looking for Jimmy Hoffa?

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N...458Z/KJXN/KJXN

Aurora-watching from a light airplane?

Weird Flight Path over Michigan
 

It could be aurora watching. Or it may be some sort of survey aircraft (even at midnight!).

Interesting that the line before that indicates the flight was listed as jackson to flint and then has diverted on that. Flight path does have it going to the flint area first.

I would think based on the positioning of the plane that there'd be too much light polution to be doing aurora watching. Straight north to get just north of lansing would make more sense than that rather than flying up to flint then working your way SE. That area has a fair amount of light polution. Quite honestly, it's pretty rare that we can see the Aurora from this far south anyways (and I'd say just about every time it's supposed to be possible it's almost guaranteed to be cloudy).

The patterns flown make more think more along the lines of surveying.

I wonder what kind of surveying they'd be doing between midnight and four AM though.

A friend looked up the Mooney's tail number. It belongs to a private company and was just registered last week, FWIW.

Maybe someone doing some sort of IFR training / practice? I used to grab the proverbial "$100 hamburger" (it was actually breakfast:D) there all the time and there were always folks practicing approaches / holds / etc. there - they have a manned tower to work with (at least they used to!). That airport has a good restaurant with a ramp that is jammed up with airplanes on Saturday and Sunday. It used to be really cool to fly in there when the NASCAR / Indy crews were in town to see all of their private jets lined up.

Probably not between midnight and four AM though.

Can you explain this 738 from ORD-DCA?

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/A...315Z/KORD/KDCA

That's impressive! (Actual distance flown more than 2x the flight plan, which wasn't even direct to begin with.)

Almost certainly an ATC hold / delay... 2 highly flow-controlled airports.

Probably not at that time although I did parts of my IFR training at night under a hood. Usually around 9pm to midnightish though...

Very likely indeed. It's common for flights departing CLE for ORD, if not subject to a ground hold, to go into a holding pattern within minutes after take-off.

I hope the passengers got the extra miles

I’ve been in normal flights and at arrival my kid (who logs to Flightaware) will ask me all exited what happened in flight that the plane apparently went back and forth…

I assume that it´s some kind of bug having to do with flightware predicting where the plane should be and mixing it with where the plane actually is…

unlikely to be holding patterns; flight duration was only 1+14 which is actually pretty quick for ORD-DCA

the track log data in FlightAware has no entries showing the flight on a northwesterly track, so the issue is certainly with the translation of aircraft data to the map plot