Aircraft

[fuggy]

What can fly at 52,000 ft? And still does? I know that Concorde did.

[Fitzer]

No commercial airliner flies above 43,000ft, the highest service ceiling is, I think, the 747SP at 45,000. Without afterburners they can't climb any higher.

[Milvus]

Concorde flew at Mach 2 at 60,000ft and was (and still is I think) the only plane to cruise at that height and speed without afterburners.

[237SJ]

Lockheed Blackbirds flew at a ridiculously high altitude. I think there might be a modern replacement for those.

[Prudie]

Some corporate jets cruise at 51,000 feet eg the Gulfstream V

[jomifl]

Gulfstream G650, with a maximum cruise ceiling of 51,000ft,

[jomifl]

Some military jets can get to about 120,000 ft

[Hypognosis]

@fuggy

If it was something you've seen, how were you able to determine the altitude?

Being nearly ten miles vertically plus slant range for any sideways displacement, would have put it 10 to 20 miles away. I take it that you couldn't make out what was at the front of the contrail?

[Hypognosis]

14 Oct 2015 edition of http://spaceweather.com has a chart explaining why high altitude travellers wouldn't want to spend too much time at 51K.

[237SJ]

Concorde crews spent plenty of time at 60,000 ft. It didn`t seem to do them any more harm than any other crew (who are dropping like flies from cancer)

[EDDIE51]

237SJ the' replacement' for the 'Blackbird' is the spy satellite.
The cameras on them now can show far more detail than any aircraft camera could ever do. Reputedly able to read a car number plate from space in perfect conditions.

[fuggy]

I was surfing Flight Radar.con approx 10days ago . Both my sons travel all over the world and I like to keep up with them. (One of them is now in Reunion) I picked up this track over the Med off the coast of Libya and it travelled in a direct line over England, as it flew over Camebridge it track appeared to zig zag north then south a couple of times, it carried on north, I lost it over north West Yorkshire. it had an identification which I think was both letters and numerals. In brackets it stated that several aircraft used this I.D, I didn't clock the speed but the Alt was 52,000ft.

[237SJ]

Eddie - Google Lockheed LR72. It can bomb people

[237SJ]

I meant SR (this is why we need an edit facility)

[237SJ]

fuggy - what aircraft was it?

[EDDIE51]

SR72 is still only a 'concept', officially it does not exist.

[fuggy]

The planes make was not identified.

[237SJ]

Was it a scheduled airline? No scheduled airline would fly at 52,000 ft.

[fuggy]

There are several questions that I would like answer. Where had it been? Where was it going? How do you account for the zig zag movements? I would associate that kind of movement with something like the Harrier. I failed to mention that this occurred late evening.

[grasscarp]

I was going to correct you about Concorde operating height but a couple of others got there first. It could have flown higher but then it would not have been able to descend quickly enough to levels with enough oxygen to breathe in event of a decompression. As to risks from Cosmic radiation - it was operating at faster speeds so shorter exposure. No flight was longer than 3 hours 40 minutes which was its maximum endurance. The flight planning of this very special plane was my job for a few years. Very sad when it was grounded.

[Hypognosis]

@fuggy

Flightradar24 sometimes does display improbable-looking zig-zag flightpaths which could be due to several causes
i) glitches in the datastream (all users affected)
ii) user settings short of continuous update (self-selected users)
iii) Aircraft is performing loops - a 2D display can only show a sharp double-back
iv) Helicopters

At some stage last year, bizjet operators twigged how popular the app had become and anonymised their registrations. Half the fun of the app gone, there although, I guess, the global security situation means the ability to know or guess where particular oligarchs are is not a good thing.

"Several a/c use this ID"
Airliners change this from one flight to the next; GA generally set it to match their tail registration. Re-use by several might be a fleet rental company or it could be government or military.