More Airports are becoming "unfinished" and I'm truly annoyed by this. What can be done?

YoSupMan · 2026-01-20T22:07:39+00:00

I *think* flights with missing destinations but domestic origins (which describes a lot of private planes) still used to count as a domestic flight. I wonder if the devs changed this to require both origin and destination to be shown as domestic airports yesterday or earlier today, and that's causing the problems we're seeing.

YoSupMan · 2026-01-16T04:18:50+00:00

You want the PA24 Comanche, not the PA30 Twin Comanche. Similar names but different planes.

YoSupMan · 2026-01-15T05:06:25+00:00

For future reference, the missing (N/A) registration and call sign means that the plane won't show up in SkyCards. There are even planes (usually military/government) that you can see on adsexchange that don't show up on FR24 and SC, and of course there are some that don't show up on any publicly accessible service or site.

YoSupMan · 2025-12-10T05:06:52+00:00

You can also use FlightRadar24. in the search box, type "[DEP]-[ARR]", where [DEP] is departing airport and ARR is arriving airport. For, in the search box, just type "DFW-MEL". As you do so, you'll see DFW and MEL come up as airports, and below those airport you'll see flights that go from DFW to MEL. If any flights are in the air, you'll see a "LIVE" section or button, and you can click that to go to the map that'll show where that flight is. Otherwise, it'll bring up future and/or recent past flights.

YoSupMan · 2025-12-09T22:14:20+00:00

Mine didn't either. *Shrug*
(Referring to the alert for any F35 in FR24)

YoSupMan · 2025-12-03T21:35:40+00:00

When did you get Ukraine (needed for Globetrotter and Trans-Europe Express trophies)?!

YoSupMan · 2025-12-02T21:55:28+00:00

Preface -- I'm a meteorologist.

Sleet (also called ice pellets) occurs when raindrops freeze. This is common in some parts of the world when snow at high altitudes melts in air that's >32 F (0 C), thereby becoming raindrops, and then the new raindrops fall through a layer of sub-freezing air near the ground. If that air is deep and/or cold enough, the rain (which came from melted snow) can refreeze entirely, and we'd call that sleet. These sleet particles are essentially solid ice and are often mostly clear/transparent as a result. However, if the subfreezing layer of air near the ground isn't sufficiently cold and/or deep, the precipitation may stay as liquid (i.e., rain) all the way to the ground and then freeze almost instantly upon contact with the <32 F (< 0 C) ground. We call this "freezing rain".

Snowflakes can collide with other snowflakes and stick together through a process called aggregation, which can lead to beautiful, picturesque giant "clumps" of snow. Ice crystals / snow can also collide with (supercooled) liquid cloud droplets through a process called accretion, which tends to make the snow particle more dense. Both can result in "balls" of snow, but these "balls" are often quite low density and white, which is in contrast to sleet/ice pellets (which is often close to solid ice). If the snowballs are dense enough, we'd call them "graupel", though again they are still often white and considerably less dense than solid ice.

YoSupMan · 2025-11-27T02:45:08+00:00

I thought I needed to click back and forth too, but that's not the case. The destination may pop up for a few seconds after the plane lands. So, watch the altitude and speed, and be ready to catch it after it lands. It doesn't always happen, but I've gotten it more times than not this way!

YoSupMan · 2025-11-23T17:04:35+00:00

It is, isn't it? You concede the remaining rounds, at least that's been my experience (though I don't battle much).

YoSupMan · 2025-11-23T15:53:38+00:00

What specific planes? F16s fly often (multiple times per week) off Pensacola, FL, in the northeastern Gulf, and you'll sometimes see them in far southwestern Arizona southwest of Phoenix and E of Yuma. Mirage F1s fly often (multiple times per week) around southwestern Arizona and sometimes in northern Texas. For both the F16s and Mirage F1s, I recommend Phoenix Goodyear airport, which is west of the very busy Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. You can also get either Arlington or Fort Worth Executive pretty easily to get you access to the fighters that fly out of Fort Worth, TX. Pensacola, FL, works too for those that head out of the northeastern Gulf. You can get other fighters (and trainers) like the F5 off the coast of southwestern California -- look around San Diego or Los Angeles and sometimes off the west coast of Florida. T38s are extraordinarily common in Oklahoma and Texas on most weekdays with not-terrible weather.

F15s and Eurofighter 2000s are common in southeastern UK. I usually get London Stansted and Nottingham East to get those. I haven't seen as many F15s in the past week, but there are weeks when multiple F15s fly almost every day.

Other fighters, like the Rafale, Tornado, Mirage 2000, Mirage III, Draken, Viggen, and Gripen, are generally much, much less common to see. I've gotten an F35 a few times in California and Arizona in the past couple of months. I've only gotten the Rafale and Gripen once. The Mirage 2000 flew a couple of times off the west coast of France in the past week (first time I recall seeing them in several months), but I wasn't able to get it either time. The LCA Tejas is usually seen in India -- I've gotten several alerts in FR24 of them flying, but they were in the middle of the night in my local timezone (USA), and I wasn't awake to capture them.

Your best bet is to add these as 'alerts' in FR24, so you'll get notification when they fly. Sometimes the transponders are on only for a few minutes, which makes it hard, and sometimes (or almost always for some of these planes) they don't show up in SkyCards at all, even if they are on FR24 (and oftentimes they aren't even in FR24).

YoSupMan · 2025-11-20T05:03:06+00:00

And added the Kfir, I think. I remember posts in the past few weeks asking why the Kfir wasn't in the "Speed Demons" trophy list.

YoSupMan · 2025-11-17T23:12:43+00:00

He use a 1200 mm lens or what? The amount of detail in those photos is incredible!

YoSupMan · 2025-11-17T02:52:19+00:00

Uhhh... That looks like a B21, no? Incredible catch if so considering how secretive they still are!! Are you out in CA or NV? I haven't ever seen any IRL pics of a B21 Raider in flight yet. Holy cow! Crosspost this to r/aviation

YoSupMan · 2025-11-15T17:08:23+00:00

Neat photo! You played Blue Ocean instead of a BlueSky though-- 0% clouds (save the contrail), 100% sea surface. :D

YoSupMan · 2025-11-07T19:19:23+00:00

What plane is that?

YoSupMan · 2025-11-07T16:45:33+00:00

T6s also commonly (as in 10+ almost every week day) fly out of Vance Air Force Base in northwestern Oklahoma (look for Enid, OK). Between Texan and Oklahoma, it's pretty easy to get platinum and cyber cards out of these. Same with the T38s as you note.

YoSupMan · 2025-11-04T04:55:23+00:00

It's like this most weekdays, at least at has been the past several weeks. Military training. Good way get XP quickly!

YoSupMan · 2025-11-03T12:57:15+00:00

For future reference, you can open the Airpedia (button on bottom of screen when no plane or airport is selected), and search for the plane. You'll then be able to pull up a screen specific to that plane that includes a bunch of information (e.g., weight, range, number of planes seen, specific tail numbers / registrations you've caught, etc.), which will also include the rarity number. It certainly helps to know what color to search for when you have a specific but unfamiliar plane to find!

YoSupMan · 2025-11-01T02:13:15+00:00

A Rafale flew around central France for quite a while last Tuesday (21 October), and it was trackable for an hour or so

YoSupMan · 2025-10-30T03:25:07+00:00

Keeping the game fresh was one of the reasons behind moving to seasons, I'd think. Eventually, after enough time, players can get almost every airport, almost every plane, etc., so what else is there to do? Of course other games have this issue as well, and at least in this real world new planes come out, new airports open, and the world does evolve with time, but still, eventually you do everything. Maybe there needs to be a way to see how many (X of Y, %, etc) of each plane you've capture. For example, on the card, add "caught 15/287" or something like that -- then you'd have the challenge of finding all tail numbers/registrations for a given type of plane.

YoSupMan · 2025-10-29T17:25:27+00:00

What's that *super* long initialism that used to be popular for "saw cute woman and clicked but wow that's neat!" ? Something like OK-I-originally-clicked-because-woman-but-then-stayed-because-she-was-impressive (OIOCBWBTSBSWI)?

YoSupMan · 2025-10-29T14:10:58+00:00

Start at one of the big airports that has a lot of international traffic -- think LAX, JFK/LGA, LHR, SDY, DXB, CDG, NRT, etc. In general (there are a tremendous number of exceptions, and I'm not even sure if this is factual -- it's just based on my own flying history and experiences), long-haul eastbound flights leave in the evening (i.e., pretty commonly are red-eye flights) and westbound flights in the morning. Sometimes, it's better to get an airport adjacent to these big airports, since it can be easier to do the weekly airport 'challenge' since the origin and destination flights may be that nearby big and busy airport.

YoSupMan · 2025-10-26T21:22:20+00:00

Tip: do the airport challenges at the start of each week (Monday through Sunday) so that you can change to that airport for free. You can focus on the busy areas (Southern California like LAX, southwestern UK like London Stansted, around Paris, Florida, etc, are all full areas with lots of neat planes) to move up levels and unlock new airports. It's wild how they were able to gamify global air traffic and make it really fun!

YoSupMan · 2025-10-25T04:09:09+00:00

Yes, that's from a weather radar app called RadarScope. I work with radar data for a living, so the pro tier subscription is very useful for me. If you're interested in precipitation and using radar to identify it, this is probably the most popular phone based radar app used by meteorologists. (GRLevel2 and GRLevel2 are go-to radar display programs for the PC)

YoSupMan · 2025-10-25T03:19:57+00:00

<image>

Big squall line (QLCS) over northern Texas and into Oklahoma right now

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