One of the biggest obstacles in convincing others that there is something unusual happening in the skies above them is obtaining proof. The website Planefinder is a worthwhile resource for obtaining the evidence needed to demonstrate that unlawful airplane spraying could be taking place. I was already aware of Planefinder, but unless things have recently changed in terms of the details displayed, I did not realise what a mine of information this website provides. If you hover your mouse over a plane as it moves across the screen, it will display summary details about the journey. By clicking on the plane, it will highlight the path that the plane has taken and provide more detailed information about the flight in a panel on the left hand side. Most of the planes displayed on the site are standard commercial aircraft that transmit data about their flights by utilising a system called Automatic Dependence Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B). Smaller and older planes do not necessarily transmit full details about their flights and the only way to confirm their location is through a system called Multilateration (MLAT). What I have discovered is that planes that utilise MLAT are more likely to display abnormal flight paths, whereby they take indirect routes to their destinations. On the face of it, this might not seem to be significant, as minor flight path variations are commonplace. However, over a couple of days, I identified numerous flights where the degree of deviation from a straightforward flight path was enormous. In some cases, the flights crossed into other countries and travelled overseas, only to eventually land at a location near to where they took off. A key benefit of the Planefinder site is that you can apply a filter, so that it only displays MLAT planes, and this makes it much easier to identify flights that behave abnormally. Planefinder says that it does restrict the information displayed, so that it does not compromise national security, which I believe means that it excludes military aircraft. However, even if military aircraft are not included, the information on MLAT flights is very interesting. I just hope that this data set is not restricted at a later date. It is worth noting that there is one commercial operator that does not transmit data on all of its flights in the normal way. Some ‘Flybe’ journeys are displayed by utilising MLAT and show extraordinarily circuitous routes. Furthermore, ‘Flybe’ has links to the UK military through ‘Flybe Aviation Services’ (FAS), which provides a Maintenance Repair & Overhaul (MRO) service for the RAF’s fleet of A400M aircraft. The FAS contract has been secured via Airbus Military. Below is a slideshow of screen shots from the Planefinder website, which displays the bizarre flight patterns that I observed. I start with those that fly near to Liverpool and then look at similarly irregular flights that pass through the UK.
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January 2018
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