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Why Your Flight Looks Strange on a Tracking App

2 min read

The short answer

Flight-tracking apps are great, but they can show odd things: gaps, dashed lines, circles or sudden jumps. Most of this is simply how the apps collect their data, or normal flying like holding and air traffic control routing. A strange-looking line on an app is almost never a sign of a problem.

A Handy Tool — With Quirks

Many people follow flights on apps like Flightradar24 — their own, or a loved one's. It can be reassuring. But sometimes the little plane on the screen does something odd, and it can set off a worry. Here's what's usually going on.

Gaps and Dashed Lines

Tracking apps mostly rely on receivers on the ground that pick up signals from planes. Those receivers can't reach everywhere — especially over oceans and remote areas.

When a plane flies beyond their reach, the app often estimates where it is, based on its speed, heading and route. Flightradar24 shows these estimates as dashed lines. If the plane changes course while out of range, the estimate can look wrong. When the plane comes back into range, the real track appears again.

Circles and Loops

A plane flying circles near its destination is usually holding — waiting its turn to land in an orderly queue. It's completely routine. Read why the plane circles before landing.

Zig-zags and Detours

Planes don't always fly in straight lines. Air traffic control often gives turns to space planes out, and pilots fly around storms or bumpy air. A zig-zag usually means the system is doing its job.

Disappearing Near the Ground

Some tracking methods only work once a plane is high enough. So a flight can briefly vanish just after take-off or before landing. It hasn't gone anywhere — the app has simply lost sight of it.

Odd Jumps in Certain Regions

In some parts of the world, satellite signals are disrupted, which can make positions on apps look jumpy. The plane itself keeps navigating safely with its other systems. Read GPS jamming in the news.

A Gentle Tip

Following a flight can be comforting — but refreshing it again and again often feeds worry instead. If you notice that happening, check less often.

A snapshot works better than a live feed. Before your trip, take one screenshot of a flight map of the whole world. At busy times it shows more than 20,000 planes in the air at once, each one an ordinary trip. Save it on your phone and look at it in flight mode, instead of refreshing an app. At any moment, more than a million people are in the air, on ordinary trips just like yours.

The Takeaway

A tracking app shows a picture built from patchy data. Odd shapes and gaps are normal quirks, not warnings. The real flight is being guided by pilots and air traffic control the whole way.

Sources

Keep reading

Why the Plane Circles Before Landing

What a holding pattern is, why air traffic control uses it, and why there's always fuel for the wait.

GPS Jamming in the News: Why Planes Still Know Where They Are

What GPS jamming is, why it's been in the news, and why planes keep navigating safely using their other systems.

How Air Traffic Control Works

How air traffic controllers keep thousands of planes a safe distance apart every day — with backups on board too.

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