Skip to main content

Claimed flights we could NOT retrieve a primary ADS-B trace for

Generated 2026-08-24T16:03:53.117Z by site/docs/Planes/following/apis/public_open_source/code/pull_all.js.

Source tried: adsb.lol globe history — https://adsb.lol/globe_history/YYYY/MM/DD/traces/<hh>/trace_full_<hex>.json

This is the only free, no-account source of historical ADS-B tracks we have found. It serves only what its volunteer feeder network actually received.

WHAT AN EMPTY RESULT DOES AND DOES NOT MEAN. A 404 here means adsb.lol holds no trace for that airframe on that UTC day. It does not establish that the aircraft did not fly, and it does not establish that a transponder was switched off. The ordinary explanations come first: the aircraft was parked and silent, it flew outside volunteer receiver coverage (most of the Atlantic, most of North Africa, much of the rural US at low altitude), or the claimed date is simply wrong. Several of the rows below are already recorded in overlaps.csv as audited inaccurate.

The claim is what is listed. The absence is what we found. Neither is proof.

TailUTC dateHTTPWhy we looked
SU-BTT2023-03-26404overlap OWENS-048 - Wilmington DE (audited_inaccurate, audit: inaccurate)
SU-BTT2023-03-27404overlap OWENS-048 - Wilmington DE (audited_inaccurate, audit: inaccurate)
SU-BTT2023-03-28404overlap OWENS-048 - Wilmington DE (audited_inaccurate, audit: inaccurate)

Where this page fits

Fourth Wilmington row, same result: OWENS-048 was marked inaccurate on paid data and the free archives above cannot reach March 2023 to say otherwise, leaving SU-BTT untested on the overlap index at a field whose whole record is outbound legs. Delaware appears on the way out, every time, never inbound — a scoring artefact rather than a pattern, and this investigation has had to catch several of those: a published removal claim the control test destroyed, the contested minute of impact, the totals that drifted between 68 and 77 as the story travelled. The correction that best shows the method working is on flight data recovery — an entry reading "arrived 1:13pm, departed 1:13pm" turned out to be a flight-duration column misread as a clock time, with real ground time about eighteen minutes.