Hello everyone. Today i’m going to show you guys why only USA flights have FPLs in FlightAware.
The answer is simple: Flightaware doesn’t have the waypoints for any other country. And yes, ALL commercial flights are required by the International Civil Aviation Organization and the Federal Aviation Admission to file a flight plan, so the non-USA flights do have flight plans.
How do I know this? Well, if you look at JBU2479, you will see that, like all other USA flights, have a flight plan.
But, if you look at BAW239, it has a flight plan too, and it goes outside of the USA!
That is because if the flight has a leg of the flight that is in the USA, the flight´s FPL will show on flightaware, regardless of the origin or destination. So, that means that the FPL only shows when the flight has a leg inside of the USA. Simple right? End of Squawk?
Wrong.
The answer is a bit more complicated. Of you click “Decode” on BAW239’s FPL, you will see that half of the waypoints are unknown.
If you search one of the unknown waypoints in SkyVector, you will find that said waypoint is in the United Kingdom, or oversea, which claries that the waypoint is part of the BAW239´s flight plan. This is because FlightAware has no waypoint coverage out of the US, which I’ve already mentioned. If you’re a FPL expert, you will see the some of the unknown waypoints look like names airways, and your correct. Because FlightAware has only FPL coverage in the USA, it only recognizes the waypoints in the USA coverage area. It did get the international waypoints, which some were in the form of airways, but because it knows nothing about the waypoints outside of the USA, it doesn’t know what they are. This coverage thing is also backed up by the flight aware Waypoint map, which as you can see, only has the USA, and no other countries, with acceptations for parts of Canada and Mexico.
So non-USA flights do have FPLs, it’s just Flightaware doesn’t pick them up. So why doesn’t flightaware just get the FPLs for all flights, even flights that aren’t in the USA but just put it in to the flight page and let the community decode it instead of just saying it has no flight plan? That is a question I cannot answer. If anyone has an answer to that question, please let me know.
For those who are wondering BAW239’s decoded FPL is, it’s:
EGLL CPT KENET GAVGO DIKAS ABDUK SWANY MERLY LESLU SOMAX 4920N 4830N 4640N 4450N 4355N CARAC WHALE EURRO OOSHN TTERI WAATR FLUTI GRIFI GGABE JOBEE KBOS
Undecoded FPL is:
CPT UL9 DIKAS L180 LESLU SOMAX 4900N/02000W 4800N/03000W 4600N/04000W 4400N/05000W 4300N/05500W CARAC N28B WHALE EURRO OOSHN5
This is the FPL for BAW239 on April 20, 2019
My message to Flight Aware: Add the international waypoints to the waypoint database. You can get the waypoints from SkyVector or Navigraph