Lude Generation

Is it just me that finds it quite mad how readily available flight tracking data is?
(my graph, on downloaded data)

I wasn't even looking for the data, I was just trying to find out how old the plane was, out of interest.

Interesting that the plane was Irish owned and registered.

And that the first officer expressed concerns about the technical state of the plane.

Doesn't surprise me.

She's done a fair miles has the old bird, delivered in 1997, it has flown more than 56,000 flight hours during 21,000 flights.
Daily Mail reports that it had a bad tail strike in 2001 as well. Horrible stuff.

What's the X axis?

I know it looks like a timestamp but what's the Z bit and why are the increments so irregular?

I flew out of Sharm last week and have done so a good few times over the past years.

Security is very tight there. It'd be very difficult for a pax to take an explosive device into the airport.

Donald wrote:What's the X axis?

I know it looks like a timestamp but what's the Z bit and why are the increments so irregular?

Don't know, not my data... I'm guessing the same as you... The additional characters might be internal CPU clock data maybe (i.e. less than a second)? Or location co-ordinate related? Or relay station related? Or travel time for the 'ping'? Or a code for which time zone?
Who knows!
I was trying to figure out what some of the other fields were as well, but couldn't be sure.

Incidentally, one of the airline directors is clearly a total idiot;

somemuppet wrote:At a news conference in Moscow, the deputy director of the airline, which was later renamed Metrojet, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error.
"The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft," Alexander Smirnov said.
"There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air," he added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34697416

Yes. It's entirely impossible for a pressure vessel to fail through any means other than it being hit by something, isn't it...
And I can't think of anything at all well known in history that says otherwise...

Oh no, hang on...

Wasn't there some very hush-hush, not at all widely known something about fatigue causing airliners to spontaneously break up in mid air..?

the data does look like an explosion though rather than it disintegrating! looking at it there is at least 2 explosions either that ar something so bad its created significant "noise" on the signal to skew the data. from a radar ping and data telemetry download.

Oh yeah i think it has been brought down who by ??? who knows wouldnt be the first time the russians have dropped one of their own.

wurlycorner wrote:Don't know, not my data...

So you made a graph without knowing what it's showing? Tsk Tsk wurly

I took an entirely logical informed view on what was what, based on some 'known knowns' (reported cruising altitude and high/low range at the end of the flight + standard time format) and steered clear from trying to infer information from the remaining 'known unknowns' in the data.

I think you'll find that's an entirely reasonable, rational and logical approach.