Calling all Australian Air-traffic Controllers

[ChrisGreaves]

We all know that I'm not the brightest blip on the radar, but there is an alarming gap, to coin a phrase, in my knowledge.

The news article SpaceX rocket to launch Australian Skykraft satellites designed to plug air traffic gaps says in part "As it stands, aircraft can only be monitored up to 400 kilometres away from land⁽¹⁾ and within sight of radar."

Me? Whenever I hear a jet passing overhead I pull up FlightRadar which purports to show lucky people flying to France, from Bonavista a 23+ hour trip for me. Sigh!

Zooming out I can see rafts of planes criss-crossing The Atlantic Ocean.
Clicking on a plane's icon brings up a panel that identifies the plane, flight, what they were being served for lunch etc.
In other words, Flight Radar seems to track every plane in the sky around the world.

Why then would Australia not just buy real-time data from wherever Flight Radar data is sourced?

More to the point, when next I fly from Perth to Adelaide, will my flight go off-signal like those satellites that orbit the moon?

(signed) "Land-bound" of Bonavista.
⁽¹⁾ "up to 400 kilometres away from land" seems to be redundant.

[John Gray]

Perhaps Wikipedia might know where FlightRadar24*'s data is sourced? Yes, it does, under the heading Tracking!

* Of course, other flight information provision organisations are available...

[ChrisGreaves]

Yes, it does,

Thanks John. I read there "From 3 March 2020, ADS-B data collected by satellite was made available to all users. Aircraft located using satellite data are coloured blue on the map, and yellow if located by terrestrial receivers.[13]"

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This screen-shot of the North Atlantic Ocean seems to verify that.

Under "Tracking":

"The aircraft-based transponders use the GPS and other flight data input to transmit signals containing aircraft registration, position, altitude, velocity and other flight data" but not all commercial aircraft contain transponders, or will transmit data publicly. The real-time map display on the back of the seats probably displays an anticipated position based on the aircraft's internal data.

"but while 99% of Europe is covered, only parts of the US are." Which surprises me as does the original report about Australia. (a) I expected the USA, an airline-based community nowadays, to be saturated with data coverage (b) Australia is basically empty, and that was the reason behind my original query. I expected that each airline would employ a clerk to keep track of the airline's craft, and ring a little hand-bell if one disappeared from the screen between Mukinbudin and Eramanga.

"Satellites equipped with ADS-B receivers collect data from aircraft outside of Flightradar24's terrestrial ADS-B network coverage area and send that data to the Flightradar24 network." but here is defined a subset of all satellites. Naive as I am I had assumed that by now there was a global coverage with satellites that did the GPS-thing and kept in touch with aircraft. (This will lead me back to my question about Satellite Telephones)

So I remain puzzled that today, Australia needs its own satellites to monitor aircraft flying over Australian territory. I can understand remote parts of any country being out of microwave tower coverage for phones, but aircraft at 30,000 feet being out of view seems strange, to me.

The question remains "Why then would Australia not just buy real-time data from wherever Flight Radar data is sourced?"

Cheers, Chris