A 'ghost' plane in Australia has supposedly popped up on Google Maps, and it's pretty bizarre.
The possible passenger plane, that looks a bit like an Airbus A320, looks to have landed on the south side of a mountain ridge north-east of Mount Leach in the Cardwell Ranges north of Ingham.
It's hard to tell if the aircraft is commercial as there seems to be no visible markings on the plane - well, as seen from Google Maps.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has spoken out about the strange sight and told Cairns Post: "There appears to be a phenomenon called ghost images and that could be what this is."
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A ghost image is a secondary image caused by a fault or glitch in an optical system,
UNILAD has contacted Google for comment.
According to Simple Flying, "the reason ghost flights exist is so that they can keep their slots at airports. This is a rule that is enforced by the European Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States, known as the 'use it or lose it' rule.
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"Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines were required to abide by the 80:20 rule which means the airlines will have to use at least 80 percent of their slot time to be entitled to keep their designated slots."
Well, pretty recently on June 8, 2022, a ‘ghost’ plane entered the airspaces of Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria without permission with its transponder and radio switched off.
It seems that the small aircraft had belonged to the director of Nida Airfield, Bronius Zaromskis.
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He claims to have sold it to an unidentified Russian-speaking customer in Panevezys, northern Lithuania, saying: “I cannot guess which country they were from.
“They might be Ukrainians, maybe Romanians or Bulgarians. I was speaking to one of them in the Russian language. But I don’t know the names of any of these men, I was not interested.
“I’ve been trying to sell that plane for years, I had nowhere to store it, so I’m glad somebody bought it. I don't remember the name of the company which bought it.”
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Bulgarian Minister of Defense Dragomir Zakov said: “At no time the plane was a threat to the civilian or military infrastructure of Bulgaria.
“It was flying at a low altitude, difficult to catch by fighters, but we monitored it at all times. We located where it landed and are working to establish the circumstances.”
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Topics: Australia, Travel, Google Maps
Anish Vij