Does anyone know why BA flights turn off their SBS about 50 miles from destination? I spot at Alicante airport where I can see the landing A/c about 2-3 minutes from touchdown. The daily BA flight from LGW switches off it's SBS before it clears the mountains and only by dead reckoning from arrival time can I ever see it. I have noticed that Air Nostrum (a BA subsidiary) also does the same. Of the many airlines from all over Europe and N Africa that operate to/from Alicante, these are the only "secret" aircraft. Note; Flybe do the same at Exeter.
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British Airways secret flights?
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The MLAT (T-MLAT, T-MLAT1 T-MLATx etc) doesn't have good coverage near the ground/lower altitude coverage in most areas.
Since it requires multiple FR24 receivers picking up the aircraft signal to do MLAT.
More info about it on this page.
Last edited by SoCalBrian; 2014-08-04, 19:19.Brian
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BA secret flights.
Thanks for the reply. I read the article about MLAT; interesting but doesn't answer the question about why BA turn off their equipment about 50 miles from destination. There are around 200 movements per day at Alicante, all of which are tracked to and from the ground on takeoff and landing so height doesn't come into the equation . The exceptions being British Airways and Air Nostrum (a BA subsidiary) which always disappear about 50 miles away and cannot be tracked close to the airport. Even the Russians are fully tracked (S7 Siberian flights).
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Thanks.
That aircraft doesn't send positional data and is tracked using MLAT which explains why we cannot track it inbound on the descent into Alicante where we don't have MLAT coverage.
BA is not switching anything "off".
Here it is arriving Gatwick at this time. You will see the Radar is T-MLAT as expected.
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