'Creative' pilots have been writing cheeky messages in the sky for years
A routine test flight in South Australia has raised eyebrows after the pilot put on a cheeky show for radar trackers, but it wasn’t the first time a pilot has gone rogue to create an interesting overhead path.
It turns out, flight paths radars have captured pilots drawing crafty pictures in the skies for years.
On Tuesday, an unenthused pilot was reportedly testing a single propeller plane for three hours at a single speed before the aircraft was used for training, when he took to the skies to share what he really felt about the task.
Those on the ground would not have been able to see the message overhead, but flight tracking program Flight Aware, which live-tracks flight routes, managed to capture the cheeky message.
The pilot was flying the Diamond Star out of Parafield Airport, north of Adelaide when he traced the words ‘I’M BORED’ in kilometre-long letters, accompanied by two phallic symbols, ABC Australia reported.
The FlightAware website recorded the pilot’s handiwork between 8.53am to 11.57am.
The unorthodox flight path came after the path of a US team football mascot was mapped over the skies of Texas, in September 2017, following a contentious University of Texas game.
“It’s fairly common for pilots to get creative and trace words or other images in the sky while they fly,” a FlightAware spokeswoman told Yahoo7.
“We’ve seen proposals, birthday messages and even a Texas Longhorn that appeared after a contentious UT football game,” she said.
Back in 2016, a Jet Blue aircraft apparently left their own x-rated message between Boston and Fort Lauderdale, with a flight path resembling male genitalia.
A test flight pilot reportedly drew a large outline of the Boeing 787 it was flying, which spread across the US, in 2017.
Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson agreed pilots drawing pictures on their flight radar was not something too new.
“All pilots plan a track for their aircraft to get between where they’re going from and to — now what that track looks like once it shows up on radar of course is another thing entirely,” he told the ABC.
“As long as the pilot flies the aircraft safely and complies with all the aviation safety rules we are not too concerned about what that track looks like.”
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