Am I right in understanding that's what's going on here? I'm new and signed up just to ask about this. I spotted it at 15:50-ish BST... as of 16:01 it's still in the air.
Quite possible, although aircraft can declare emergency for issues that are not as serious as you imagine
I know, I'm just curious if anyone knows what's going on. It's still flying and it looks like it hasn't diverted it looks like so...
Pilots declare emergencies for all kinds of things that aren't dangerous. It's encouraged that if there is a system failure of something to declare so you can get priority service from ATC. Most private pilots do't want to declare because the potential FAA interaction after used to be a death sentence.
As I already stated, I know this friend. I figured from the flight-path that it was something that didn't seem to be affecting the airworthiness of the aircraft, at least in the short-term. Behaviour of the blip suggests an electrical issue; at least to me it was partially vanishing off the track (with its data still visible, just no blip) every few minutes or so, at irregular intervals. I was just curious if anyone knew what was going on. It didn't seem to land at an airfield but there are several airbases nearby and it could easily just have been an inaccurate position.
