I have set up some FR24 alerts on certain ICAO categories, being curious about how many are flying and whether VFR or IFR.
The data is astonishing in many cases. I see some turboprops flying 3x a year. One of the two known Lancair Evolutions flies maybe 1x a year. The other sits for 6 months and then flies in the summer.
A lot of people just pack it in for 6 months over the winter. God knows what that does to the engine.
IFR GA particularly is far smaller than most think.
Of course FR24 picks up only Mode S (or ADS-B which almost no GA radiates) but one can’t do much flying around Europe without Mode S today. Especially IFR.
I would not be convinced about this.
There are plenty of aircraft and flights which don’t seem to show up on FR24.
I don’t actually understand why, but if for example you add a filter right now to show all type C25A it shows about 5 currently airborne. Not one shows a registration, but they will all have mode S
I’d be careful using FR24 for statistical purposes.
Last year, at least 1/3rd of the flights my plane did have not been detected by it, and mine is ADSB-Out.
Also I’ve “lost” flights I tracked countless times, others had wrong origins and destinations.
FR is a toy, no more, no less.
I would expect bizjet operators to block all theirs, for competitive reasons.
The origins and destinations are usually wrong because fr24 has no flight plan access.
The history is weird, I know one of our aircraft was flying Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I saw it on FR24 on Saturday, but a search by registration shows pictures of the right aeroplane, but no flights.
Neil,
if people don’t activate their flight plans in the GNS/GTN, ADS-B out does not generate position telegrams for FR to read. Happened to me many times.
Now if there are lots of 12 hour/year artists around who use only the COM part of their 430, their ADS-B installation never really works… there are many such variants why flights don’t show.
Biz jets usually show but not with registration as most biz jet owners will block their planes.
Surely, everyone in the ifr system and most vfr at altitude will be responding on mode s, so ads b is not relevant. Also very little light ga is radiating ads b anyway.
They track if only on Mode S is emitted? I think I will have to tell them to stop that, at least for my aircraft.
you add a filter right now to show all type C25A it shows about 5 currently airborne. Not one shows a registration, but they will all have mode S
You have to click on the aircraft symbol to show the registration on the L/H side of the screen … at least my PC based FR24 does that reliably …e.g.
https://www.autorouter.eu/track/66619eOJ mode s only
