Why are there no planes flying over us in Weyregg am Attersee, Austria? This is REALLY odd.
On of my most-used iPhone apps is Plane Finder. I love looking at what planes are above me and the app has an AR view to ID planes as well as a map view. In DC, I learned that on certain days the Brits loved to fly on HUGE planes to Mexico. And at my dad’s house in remote Northern Wisconsin, I learned that a lot of huge planes leave Chicago heading for Asia and fly over his house. They are very high up of course. But you can tell they are BIG planes. Plane Finder also lets you see all kinds of data about the plane such as what type of plane it is, how old it is, what days of the week it flies, the current flight time of the flight and how much time is left on that flight, how many seats are on the plane and how much cargo the plane holds. Every time I go to a new place and I hear a plane above me I am looking to see where it came from and where it is going. In some places like at my mom’s house, most of the planes are Navy and they of course don’t show up on my app. But most commercial planes show up.
So back to Weyregg am Attersee, Austria. The day we arrived I noticed I didn’t hear any planes. Or see any planes. Do they not fly over these mountains? It was weird! And when I used Plane Finder to view the map there seemed to be this big empty area around us with no planes. This is so strange!!!
I decided to look and see if there was some reason why planes don’t fly over this area and I found it. During our stay, there would be supersonic training of the Austrian Air Force!! Wow!!! I am actually glad I read it because the sonic booms probably would have scared me!
Here is part of what I read about the training:
The training is indispensable for a functioning Austrian airspace monitoring. It serves to continue to maintain safe flight operations in all applications. The close and time-critical coordination between military pilots, radar officers and military and civil air traffic control is an essential purpose of the training. Furthermore, the pilots train under real physical stress, which can not be displayed in the simulator. It is flown almost over the entire federal territory with exception of metropolitan areas as well as the provinces Tyrol and Vorarlberg. The airfields are defined in cooperation with civil air traffic control. In order to keep the noise level as low as possible, it is flown at high altitudes.
Well, we still heard the sonic booms. They weren’t as loud as when the Space Shuttle would come back into Cape Canaveral, Florida. That was LOUD. But it was neat to hear the booms – usually two in a row – and know they were up there training!
That also explains why there were NO other planes around us. Commercial airliners aren’t going to be flying through where sonic booms and fighter jets are training!