How to find a plane without a flight plan

[emily blake]

I'm stumped on this one. I need my protag to find a private plane. He caught the ID on the tail as it was taking off from a private airport runway, but this plane would not have filed a flight plan and he needs to find out where it's headed ASAP.

I was looking at plane spotters, but still haven't figure out how to use them in this capacity. Any ideas?

[ATB]

I'm in no way knowledgeable in this area, but why would this plane not have to file a flight plan?

Don't all flights have to be reported, commercial or private? It's a safety issue, right?

[Patrick Sweeney]

Originally Posted by ATB

I'm in no way knowledgeable in this area, but why would this plane not have to file a flight plan?

Don't all flights have to be reported, commercial or private? It's a safety issue, right?

Covert ops. Spies. Smugglers. Cover-up. Lots of possibilities, at least in a movie.

[emily blake]

If it's a private plane taking off from a mom and pop type private airport, it can get away with no flight plan. Drug runners do it, so I have learned in my researching. But this is not about a drug runner.

It is, however, a very shady plane.

[ATB]

So if it's a plane without a registered flight plan, wouldn't it alert authorities when it popped up on radars for, say, flight control operators?

If so, that would be one way of finding it. He knows where it took off from and, possibly, a general idea of its direction.

Maybe he has a friend who's a flight control operator? He could call in a favor and have him search for any unidentified planes on his radar.

[Patrick Sweeney]

I don't know about the technical details of tracking planes, so I'll try some other ideas: Search the hangar for clues - a dropped card or brochure, a notepad with indentations from the last note written on it, etc. Find out how much fuel the plane took on board and extrapolate destinations. Interview (or interrogate, depending) someone who might have overheard the flight crew talking.

[GI_Jeep]

Originally Posted by ATB

I'm in no way knowledgeable in this area, but why would this plane not have to file a flight plan?

Don't all flights have to be reported, commercial or private? It's a safety issue, right?

Commercial I think is required always. Private is only required during IFR (instrument flight rules).

[docgonzo]

Does your protag know anything about who is on board? Can s/he deduce their destination from what s/he knows about them? Or maybe s/he overheard something said right before take off that would tip off your protag? Maybe you're stumped because you haven't looked beyond the ID/flight plan option.

And s/he can always get all James Bond and jump onto the wing of the plane.

[ATB]

Originally Posted by GI_Jeep

Commercial I think is required always. Private is only required during IFR (instrument flight rules).

But with so many flights in progress at any given time, don't they need to be, for lack of a better word... choreographed?

Each pilot needs to know what altitude he should be at and what path to take so that no two flight paths tragically meet.

So how do they take into account the unregistered private flights? Isn't there some protocol to make sure private flight paths and commercial flight paths don't intersect?

[GI_Jeep]

Originally Posted by emily blake

I'm stumped on this one. I need my protag to find a private plane. He caught the ID on the tail as it was taking off from a private airport runway, but this plane would not have filed a flight plan and he needs to find out where it's headed ASAP.

I was looking at plane spotters, but still haven't figure out how to use them in this capacity. Any ideas?

You can look up the owners info by tail number. Maybe work that somehow?