posted on Jan, 7 2009 @ 12:37 AM
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.