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Originally Posted by surreal1221  "Errors" like this are going to continue until the FAA spends. . . yes spends. . . money on upgrading the radar infrastructure. |
The error is more than likely to be in the AC equipment. Altitude is reported from your encoding altimeter not standard ATC radar.
Looking at this guys track log on Flightaware, it certainly looks like one incongruous altitude report. The data for flight aware is likely taken from an FAA product known as Aircraft Situtation Display to Industry (ASDI), so it is an accurate representation of what the FAA saw.
The incident apparently occured very early in the flight during climb out. There are two observations with the same timestamp one at 4200' and climbing the other at 39000' and climbing. The next observation, one minute later, shows 5500 and climbing. You'd probably break an F16 trying to achive that flight profile. After the anomoly, the flight appears to progress normally climbing to altitude and descending only nearing the destination.
I do think the FAA is probably over reacting but I feel the incident does bear looking into to understand the cause.