Nellis range restricted airspace violation

Nellis range restricted airspace violation

n421dh on flightaware.com

skyvector.com chart of area

Groom Lake is in the upper left corner. The plane flew over Thunderbird Lake (or Desert Lake if you prefer), then took a heading to McCarran. Route V21, which is what the plane filed, is substantially to the east.

How did you come by this? did you monitor air traffic on a scanner or PC? Or did you physically see him ? Did he get forced down or shot down? Inquiring minds!...lol

I just happened to have this airspace on display when it occurred, otherwise I would have missed it. [The time I posted about British Airways flying over the range, someone else alerted me.] I was using FBOweb via Google Earth, though you could view it from any number of pay websites. You could probably see it on Flightaware.com as well for free, though the resolution would probably not be good enough to tell it violated Nellis airspace.

The image you see is made up from the track provided by flightaware, with a bit of hacking to get it into KMZ format. I have the restricted airspace as a KMZ too, so I put the two on Google Earth and verified the airspace was violated.

I wasn't monitoring Nellis control, so I don't know if the plane was ordered to divert. I also don't know if that airspace can be seen from well Nellis control. [It is not flown as much as the west side of the Nellis range.] There are all sorts of holes in Nellis control radar, depending on the altitude. It may be the plane wandered into Nellis airspace and got that far until Nellis spotted it.

They don't do much at Thunderbird/Desert lake. In fact, you can drive along the southern edge of it, depending on road conditions. Dog Bone Lake, just over the next mountain range, is another story. They bomb that range.