Strange Flight Path

whyulittle

Just saw a very strange sight, of an Aer Lingus jet flying south west >> north east, under the clouds - you could even hear the engines a bit. I'm in Athlone, so not near any airports, it was totally out of place.

cyrusdvirus

Last october 12 months i was on a flight from Munich to Dublin. There was a LOT of traffic around Dublin as a result of fog, we ended up having to go to Shannon to refuel, then back up to Dublin.

Could have been something related?? Maybe a flight into Belfast that had to divert to Shannon to refuel??

Steyr

Training perhaps? The odd time you will get an Airliner over Galway City/Galway Bay training from EINN.

yaeger

Maybe he was lost, ,maybe forgot to apply wind component to his whizzwheel :-P

highlydebased

RANAR intersection is in the Athlone area. Its regular for westbound/eastbound USA-Dublin

FlutterinBantam

Near Granard

whyulittle

Neon-Circles wrote: »

RANAR intersection is in the Athlone area. Its regular for westbound/eastbound USA-Dublin

Which is what exactly?

Get plenty of stuff overhead heading east/west, but his was heading well north of Dublin, and it was the height it was at that really made it stand out.

goingnowhere

whyulittle wrote: »

Which is what exactly?

Get plenty of stuff overhead heading east/west, but his was heading well north of Dublin, and it was the height it was at that really made it stand out.

Could have been a delayed climb after take off due traffic, routing via RANAR could be good if runways 10 or 16 where in use in Dublin

Sky is full of points, each point has a 5 letter name. These points are just lat and longitudes, other points have 3 letter codes are radio stations providing directional information of some sort, there are two type, VOR and NDB. Flights are routed from point to point by ATC.

So if you took off from Shannon for the UK just might end up been sent to RANAR then LIFFY (just north and east of Dublin) then ROLEX (boundary with Manchester)

http://www.iaa.ie/safe_reg/iaip/Published%20Files/AIP%20Files/ENR/EI_ENR_6_2_en.pdf

highlydebased

goingnowhere wrote: »

So if you took off from Shannon for the UK just might end up been sent to RANAR then LIFFY (just north and east of Dublin) then ROLEX (boundary with Manchester)

http://www.iaa.ie/safe_reg/iaip/Published%20Files/AIP%20Files/ENR/EI_ENR_6_2_en.pdf

All of the Shannon northern/midlands UK route via the UV14 airway (and usually cleared direct LIFFY) therefore would not be up in that direction

Its very possible there was holding over RANAR and he was at the bottom of the stack, or as others said a delayed climb

irishatco

Neon-Circles wrote: »

Its very possible there was holding over RANAR and he was at the bottom of the stack

There's no hold at RANAR, so unless something exceptional was happening (such as WX in the vicinity of the DINIL hold) then that is unlikely.

whyulittle wrote: »

Just saw a very strange sight, of an Aer Lingus jet flying south west >> north east, under the clouds - you could even hear the engines a bit. I'm in Athlone, so not near any airports, it was totally out of place.

What sort of altitude would you estimate the aircraft was at? The base of controlled airspace over Athlone is FL75 (7500' on standard pressure) so it shouldn't have been any lower than FL80. Sounds like the aircraft was routing north-easterly inbound to EIDW, but avoiding military airspace in the R16 or MOA4. Possibly a departure from Shannon, but could also have been an arrival from SOTA (mainly traffic inbound from the Canaries) complying with the Shannon RAD to route overhead Cork-Shannon-RANAR (rather than Cork-CML-KLY) to avoid conflicting crossing traffic at CML routing via STU into UK airspace.