Pinkfroot news's Blog (27)

Here at Pinkfroot we're delighted to announce a major new update to Plane Finder and Plane Finder HD

Highlights include...

• Near real time tracking of ALL scheduled traffic across North America!
• Huge increase in general aviation tracking in the USA and Canada
• Beautiful new icons with accurate detailing
• New white aircraft icon set - this looks great in the satellite map view 
• Added flight number to all views
• New unified search -…

Here at Pinkfroot we're delighted to announce a major new update to planefinder.net

Highlights include...

• Near real time tracking of ALL scheduled traffic across North America!
• Huge increase in general aviation tracking in the USA and Canada.
• Stunning new icons with accurate detailing.
• Customizable labels.
• Search by flight number or callsign.
• Various performance and visual enhancements.

We hope that you enjoy…

As reported earlier on planefinder.net we've been tracking the first ever arrival in Holland of a scheduled A380 flight.

Emirates Flight EK147 from Dubai landed in Schiphol a short time ago.

If you want to watch this again we've included below a Google Earth recording of the flight.…

It's busy on the Solent today as the Round the Island yacht race gets underway.

We're not sure that our AIS tracking systems have seen so many competitors carrying AIS before!

The official race site is here...

http://www.roundtheisland.org.uk

This site includes information on the best vantage point through…

We've just picked up the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as it completes the Atlantic crossing.

You can see it here on Plane Finder - http://planefinder.net/flight/BOE787

Should be interesting tracking this around the UK over the next couple of days as it heads to Manchester.

The aircraft registration is N787BX and Flight Number…

If you've been to Portsmouth or Southsea recently you will probably have seen something that bears a passing resemblance to an oil rig appearing in and around the harbour!

This photo was uploaded by John Scriven

The "rig" is Deep Diver 1 - a jackup barge owned by Furgo Seacore.…

HMS Tireless travelled through Southampton Water today for a 5 day official visit to Southampton.

The submarine is one  of six serving Trafalgar-class vessels.

HMS Tireless will be alongside Eastern Docks until Tuesday and will be hosting visitors from across the region.

Here she is below on a wonderful, but misty, day.

The cargo vessel Aztec Maiden has run aground overnight off the coast of Wijk aan Zee, near Amsterdam, Holland.

The coastguard SAR craft Donateurand the tug Ievoli Black and are in attendance and hope to re-float the vessel at high tide this afternoon.

The shipfinder screenshot below shows the vessel's track during the incident here:

You can see the…

More Panda News!

FedEx are once again flying two VIP's (Very Important Panda's).

Huan Huan (Happy) and Yuan Zi (Chubby) are currently in the air on their way from China to Beauval ZooParc in Paris!

The FedEx Panda Express aircraft remains the plane of choice for chinese pandas.

The Boeing 777F (N892FD) is traveling the 5000 miles and is due to land at 1200…

On Friday night (13th January 2012) the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground on the island of Giglio off of the Tuscan coast in Italy.

The passenger ship is reported to be listing 20 degrees and over 4,000 passengers and crew were ordered to abandon ship.

A huge rescue operation is underway - sadly it seems that some people have died during the incident.

Thanks to Terry Kenton for submitted this photo taken at Civitavecchia, Italy in 2006 - the year she was…

The Cargo ship Rena broke in two overnight spilling containers and debris into the sea in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

The wreck was hit by 6m waves during the heaviest storms since she ran aground in October.

There were still up to 800 containers onboard at the time of the storm.

You can see activity in the Bay of Plenty using playback on shipfinder.co…

A busy 24 hours on the events that we are currently tracking at pinkfroot

First the good news...

MSC Poesia was freed from the reef off of Port Lucaya, Grand Bahama Island at around 18:00 local time.

Thanks again to Capt d'Von Archer who even managed to get pinkfroot into the local news!!…

The Cruise Liner MSC Poesia has run aground at Port Lucaya near Freeport Bahamas.

Thanks to Capt. d'Von Archer for alerting us to this using the spotted function of Ship Finder Free

Screenshot here

Photo by Patrick Kenealy of MSC Poesia leaving Venice,…

An operation is underway in Belfast Lough to remove 54,000 tons of oil.

The Bermuda registered Genmar Companion developed a crack in her deck on 16 December 2011 during a voyage from Rotterdam to New York.

Since then she has been sheltering off of the Copeland Islands in the Irish Sea.

Her cargo of vacuum gas oil is being transferred to BW Seine with the operation expected to take up to 36 hours to complete.

Passengers on the Commodore Clipper from Portsmouth to St Helier, Jersey spent 24 hours on-board overnight as the English Channel continues to be hit by the winter storms.

The ferry crossing normally only takes 9 hours!!

That must have been a very long night

An image below from our marine traffic website at shipfinder.co shows the Commodore Clipper finally in port at St Helier!!

 …

Mount Etna volcano in Sicily, Italy has erupted overnight sending an ash cloud high into the air.

Eurocontrol have issued NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) alerts advising of flight traffic re-routing in the region.

This is likely to cause some local disruption and delays around Catania-Fontanarossa Airport (LICC/CTA).

Pinkfroot are plotting the ash cloud, and its effect on air traffic, in our Plane Finder apps and on …

Sadly a crewman died today in the English Channel as high winds battered the UK.

The tanker Annie PG was on her way to Stanlow when hit by the very high winds and waves.

Here she is seen diverting to Falmouth..

http://shipfinder.co/ship/232698000/time/2012-01-03T14:10:00%20UTC

Nick Mercer has previously photographed the vessel…

We're delighted to see ADS-B equipage continue to expand.

Skywest Airlines in Australia recently contracted Fokker Services to fit and certify their fleet of 9 x Fokker 100 aircraft with ADS-B Out equipment.

We're tracking the Fokker 100 flights now on planefinder.net and in the Plane Finder apps.

You can see one of the aircraft (VH-FNU) here -  …

It is always interesting to read press coverage relating to "imminent" volcanic eruptions of the kind not seen for hundreds or even thousands of years.

The articles usually refer to horrible devastation, huge ash clouds, aviation chaos and a significant drop in global temperatures.

2012 already looks like being no exception to this!

The Daily Mail in the UK have started well with this story about the Laacher See volcano in Germany..…

We are once again tracking the Cargo ship Thor Liberty after a recent brush with the Finnish authorities regarding missile smuggling!

Found on board were 69 Patriot missiles that should have been going from Emden, Germany to South Korea!

Thor Liberty was in fact found to be heading for China.

We understand that the Captain, First Mate and Cargo are still in custody in Finland but the vessel and crew have now been released.

You can see the…