Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Strange flight pattern over Los Angeles

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Strange flight pattern over Los Angeles

    This is very odd. Late night/early morning on Sep.29th I heard a prop plane go over my house so I went to Flightradar24 to see what was up. It’s not normal to hear this at night. Nothing showed up so I started clicking on planes and came across the following.

    As you can see in the photos It’s a Learjet 60. No registration or flight info appeared other than what you see here. Curiosity got the best of me and I continued to follow this.

    After Flying around Los Angeles for a good while it climbed to 30k feet and headed north. It ended up flying up to Sacramento Intl. but tracking went off during its descent. I started listening to the ATC streams for LAX but heard nothing that could be attributed to this LJ60. As you can see it made several approaches to LAX down to around 200 feet but never landed. You can also see many of it’s flight tracks follow the landing approach pattern for LAX.

    Additionally, it’s average flight altitude was between 1500 and 2000 feet. Why would a plane like this be flying that low and slow in such a strange pattern for such a long time over a big city?

    And here is another bizarre thing, searching through my browser history this flight does not appear. Every other flight I have tracked will appear but not this one. Incidentally, I watched this flight throughout the night on three different browsers (Chrome, Safari and Firefox) and it does not appear in any history. Weird.

    Does anyone have any insight as to what was happening here?
    Curiosity is killing me.

    Screen caps. taken at 1:43, 2:11 and 2:51 AM

    LJ60_0143.jpgLJ60_0211.jpgLJ60_0251.jpg

  • #2
    I doubt you heard a prop airplane that was a Lear 60, two different airplane's I suspect.
    The FAA uses Lear 60's to flight check airways and approaches. The middle of the night is the only time they can check really busy airports without disrupting the normal flow of airlines.
    Part of the approach check is to check signal radiation out away from the airport hence the low flying out 10 to 15 miles away. The west descent into Sacramento was probably to do an airway check on several VOR's in the area.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by porterjet View Post
      I doubt you heard a prop airplane that was a Lear 60, two different airplane's I suspect.
      The FAA uses Lear 60's to flight check airways and approaches. The middle of the night is the only time they can check really busy airports without disrupting the normal flow of airlines.
      Part of the approach check is to check signal radiation out away from the airport hence the low flying out 10 to 15 miles away. The west descent into Sacramento was probably to do an airway check on several VOR's in the area.
      Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Versatile aircraft the Lear - here in Oz the Air Force uses chartered Lears to tow targets for combat aircraft although not over high population areas and not at very low altitude. Interesting to watch on FR24 because the Lears - usually a pair - show up as just like any other corporate jets with no specific ID and they dart all over the sky and appear to be chasing each other but you can't, of course, see what the military aircraft they are working with are doing.

      Comment


      • #4
        Hey thanks porterjet. That does sound reasonable. I knew it had to be something logical but I just couldn't
        figure out what.

        On a funnier note, I showed the screencaps to people I know that wear "tin foil on their heads".
        I don't have to tell you their reaction. I won't mention your explanation. My joke on them.

        It was the sound of the prop plane that brought me to look at Flightradar. The Lear never came over my location.
        Sorry if my post was not clear.
        I do get jets flying over me when LAX is foggy and they change the departure pattern.

        Thanks again.

        Comment

        Working...
        X