Flights briefly vanish from Austrian air traffic

[Richard Lee]

http://news.yahoo.com/flights-brief...-162845447.html;_ylt=AwrBEiJX3ZlTCU0AnFHQtDMD

VIENNA (AP) -- Key flight data from high-flying aircraft mysteriously disappeared twice recently from controllers' radar screens in Austria and some of its neighbors and the relevant EU agencies have been asked to investigate, Austria's flight safety organization said Thursday.


Marcus Pohanka of Austro Control described the incidents on June 5 and Tuesday as unprecedented. He said the height, location, identities and other information for a total of 13 aircraft suddenly vanished over Austria— both times for about 25 minutes.

etc. etc.
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Anyone have any more information about these events?
It almost sounds like a problem on the abs-b band..

Cheers,
Rich

 

[Richard Lee]

Maybe we could play back the events on PlaneFinder.net, and see if ads-b signals were effected?
Does anyone know the time of these events?
Might be informative to see the recorded data of what happened over Austria..?.

 

[Mark Daniels]

We couldn't see any issues with ADS-B data at this time. Sounds like an issue with the ATC server/network systems I think.

 

[Richard Lee]

I scanned for a while in fast-forward, looking for a 25 minute dead zone.. But saw nothing.. That's why I wanted the event timing..

If the ADS-B signals were good to the PF ground stations over there, then you are most likely right.
No glitches at PlaneFinder.net seems to mean those controllers need to buy some apps.. For back-up!

Now that I think about it, if the FAA gets hit by a hacker attack, there are a lot of non-government servers
that might not be affected at all. Those servers could be used as an emergency back-up.

Just need to have some humans in the link that can make judgement calls.
This morning, I noticed VRS showing a plane at 5,596 miles.. Looking elsewhere online, I saw where it had been..
And, that it's position was being Guesstimated. After about 5 min, the real position came back and the estimate was pretty close.
This is the second time I've seen this type of error in VRS. It was 10,090 miles on the last one.. And that one showed up on the map.. On the other side of the world!

 

[Mark Daniels]

We do see bad data from time to time.
Some of these problems can come from low end receivers sending poor quality data. We also get the odd misreport from aircraft.
We try our best to filter out such weirdness!!

PS - Good choice of music there )

 

[Richard Lee]

I'm not so sure it was a "low end receiver, sending poor quality data", in both cases, Or some malfunction of the plane's transponder.?.
Since N525SD seemed to drop off some other ground station's receiver too.

I will be installing a much better '1090 Puck' receiver this evening. Just to try it out, for a few days, before installing new coax up the tower..

I'm stocking up on free music before my Amazon Prime expires for the last time..

Edit:
It took an extra day to get the 1090 Puck, but it's working now..