No real 747 flew this. It was a prank using impossible flight data via ADS-B spoofing. Ground-based “software-defined radios” (SDRs) broadcast fake transponder signals to trick ADS-B Exchange. This works because both the ADS-B & AIS systems use unencrypted, unauthenticated data.

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joecool1029 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It was sent to ADSBexchange's API, not over RF. No laws were broken.

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nshireman 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, as evidenced by the "Source:Other" tag on ADSBExchange. Signals actually sent over the air would show ADS-B, TIS-B, etc, as the data source.

	▲	Scoundreller 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It’s only “other” at the very last point. Go earlier in the track and it shows as “ADS-B”, but every historical real flight in this plane is MLAT (it doesn’t broadcast its precise position but it can be inferred from receivers)
	▲	jjwiseman 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's not true. And if you click almost anywhere else on the spoofed track it will show as Source: ADS-B.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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