Janet WWW278 flights over the range

flightaware.com...

They occasionally fly the Janets between Groom Lake and the TTR. Routing looks a bit confusing since the flights depart and arrive at TNX (ICAO for the TTR, but used as a cover for Groom flights too.). This particular flight is interesting because they filed to fly way to the west of the NTTR, but then decided to fly right over the range. The Janet would have been visible from the Cedar Pipeline Ranch and perhaps Rachel.

The altitudes in flightware look MSL, so the Janet would have been 6000ft or so AGL around the Rachel area.

So they must be doing something at Tonopah instead of Area 51...??

How did you get a Janet flight number, you hanging out at Las Vegas Airport with binoculars or something???

reply to post by SrWingCommander


Go to flightaware and search for flights related to TNX. Then read the output and look for a flight going from TNX to TNX. You will have to click on "more flights" to get reach this particular flights.

While it is possible there are round robins from Groom or Tonopah Test Range, most likely it is a flight between bases Such flights themselves aren't rare, but I never saw them fly direct.

This also shows where the "bubble" (no tracking zone) starts over the NTTR. For flights to Groom Lake, the FAA feed stops rather early over the range. In the case of this direct flight, they were tracked for 43 miles over the range.

Note flightaware's analysis of the flight plan showed an expected flight of 228 statute miles, but the actual flight is 80 statute miles. How exactly flightaware comes up with that number is suspect since they don't have tracking for the entire flight. As the crow flies, the distance from Groom Lake to where the tracking started is around 33 miles.

If I had to guess the full path, I'd say they flew directly from Groom to around Chalk Mountain (a good visual), then turned to the north west to get to the TTR. The mileage would be closer to the 80 sm that flightaware states. It could be possible that the FAA feed has the distance traveled as part of the data package.

somethings not right here. That plane was airborne when the tracking started. It took off at 1:16 and at 1:18 it was at 12,000 feet at 365 knots? There's no way a 737 went from takeoff to 12,000 feet in two minutes.

So how does this work gariac? Did they file IFR or something after taking off from groom or something and then the tracking starting or ? I'm confused! To me it looks like they took off from groom, flew west and landed at TNX but why doesn't it show the ascent? And that descent was pretty agressive too.


EDIT: Nevermind read your third paragraph.

reply to post by boomer135


As you surmised, the sudden appearance of the 737 is due to the filter on the FAA feed. There have been one or two occasions where the filter didn't work, both on the Beechcraft IIRC, but not in a long time. I will dig up a track and post it later. As far as I can tell now, Nellis has no bugs in the FAA feed filter. There should be a post I did on ATS a few years ago where commercial traffic was routed south of Groom Lake. Unlike the planefinder.net BS tracking, these flights were over the range in fact since they were detected first with ADS-B from a Vegas area resident who alerted me to the incursion.

I can understand why the Janets act like "real" airlines coming out of Vegas, i.e. filing IFR flight plans and such. Once over the range, the landings are visual nearly all the time. So you would think a flight from Groom to the TTR would just be visual, but for the 737s, that doesn't seem to be the case. This could be as simple as insurance rules or some standard operating procedure from the DoD. Certainly flight following is a good idea for a 737. In any event, the IFR wasn't cancelled for a VFR direct flight. They just flew direct and let the tracking happen. Now maybe that was the mistake.

The fatal crash of N27RA probably took a similar direct route. It crashed 7 miles southeast of the TTR. At one time there was a google earth marker by the suspected crash site, but it has been removed. It is on restricted land, so other than for historic purposes, I'm not sure how useful the marker was.

Google is a very compromised company due to the federal and military contracts they have. There are obvious crap google earth community markers that have never been removed, but some of the useful markers tend to go away.