After Hurricane Maria, the second catastrophic hurricane to move through the Caribbean in less than a month, we wanted to provide an update on Flightradar24 coverage in the area.
Update 25 September
Receivers in the areas affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria are slowly coming back online. Some receivers, like those on St Maarten, have been physically destroyed and will take some time to return to operation. Others are offline due to lack of power or internet, like all receivers on Puerto Rico. We’re hopeful that that active receivers in the Dominican Republic and British Virgin Islands will enable to track a good number of rescue and recovery flights in Puerto Rico over the coming days.
21 September
In the wake of Maria, nearly all of our receivers from Martinique to the Dominican Republic’s east coast are inactive. From St. John’s to Puerto Rico, we currently have no active receivers. Puerto Rico is without electricity and some estimates judge it may take months for power to be restored to the island.
Other receivers are still down due to damage from Hurricane Irma. We’ve been in contact with receiver hosts across the Caribbean to offer assistance if and when they are able to resume hosting a receiver.
As a result of these offline receivers, low-level MLAT coverage in the area is currently unavailable as is ground-level ADS-B coverage. ADS-B and MLAT coverage is variable at other altitudes, depending on the the aircraft’s transponder and proximity to the receiver.
As all those affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria begin to recover and rebuild, please keep them in your thoughts.
