An Air Peace aircraft appeared to be flying at supersonic speed over Ghana on Tuesday evening, according to flight-tracking platform Flightradar24.
The Boeing 737-36N with registration 5N-BUL was displayed cruising at 29,000 feet with an indicated ground speed of 910 knots, which is nearly twice the speed of sound, while flying over Ghana’s airspace around 7:30 p.m.
The aircraft’s flight details, including its departure and arrival points, were not visible on the platform at the time, leading to some assumptions that the reading was a technical glitch.
However, Flightradar24 has clarified that the unusually high speed was not a system error but a function of the aircraft’s transponder type.
“Not a glitch, but a function of the type of transponder on this aircraft,” the official Flightradar24 account posted on X (formerly Twitter), linking to a blog post that explains how the platform tracks flights using different data sources.
Why the aircraft appeared faster than normal
Flightradar24 receives live flight data through multiple sources, mainly ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast) and MLAT (Multilateration).
While most modern aircraft use ADS-B to transmit complete data including speed and position, some older models rely on MLAT, which estimates an aircraft’s position by measuring how long its signal takes to reach several receivers.
Because MLAT involves complex timing calculations, certain aircraft may appear to be moving at unrealistic speeds on the radar map, even though they are flying at normal commercial speeds.
This explains why the Air Peace flight’s speed appeared to exceed the limits of its Boeing 737 model, which typically cruises at around 450 knots (about 830 km/h).
There has been no report of any incident involving the aircraft, and Air Peace continues to operate regular flights between Lagos and Accra.
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