AIR PICTURE — CHAGRIN FALLS, OH — 2026-09-23
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Quiet day overhead — traffic running roughly 60% below the weekly average, with a small but interesting cast of characters including military callsigns, a Chinese-registered aircraft, a Saudi jet, and several contacts squawking questionable hex codes.
NOTABLE TRAFFIC
- DAL2480 [A3F684] — Descending through 15,375 ft on heading 304°, likely inbound to CLE. One of the lower, slower contacts of the day. - UAL3870 — Caught at 10,275 ft heading 228°, consistent with a CLE arrival or departure sequence. - N721N — Registered US tail, cruising at 47,000 ft doing 530 kts eastbound. That altitude puts it well above standard commercial traffic. Large bizjet or something that prefers not to be asked questions. - SWA374 — Down in the weeds at 2,150 ft, 134 kts, heading 51°. Looks like a normal approach profile, possibly CLE-bound. - SKW302M — Similarly low at 1,025 ft, 124 kts. On approach, nothing alarming. - N158PH — 525 ft, 117 kts. Somebody is very close to the ground. Presumably intentional.
ANOMALIES
- VADER01 / VADER91 [AE779B / AE77A0] — Two US military hex contacts bearing the "VADER" callsign series. Neither appears in the active traffic list with positional data, but their Mode-S squawks are unambiguous. They were here. Whether they wanted to be noticed is a separate matter. - B8027 [7803C8] — Chinese-registered aircraft, 41,000 ft. Logged, noted, filed appropriately. - APZ135 [71C704] — Saudi Arabian registration, 38,975 ft. Long way from home. Routine transcon, almost certainly. - ABD7042 / VTM692 / AMX680 / RJA268 / JAL6 / ANA110 / SAS9250 — Multiple contacts with hex codes outside any known national allocation range. Some may be legitimate operator-assigned codes; several warrant a second look. - N523WC / AAL981 — Both flagged low-and-fast (under 3,000 ft, above 260 kts). Neither appears in today's confirmed traffic list with positional data. Logged for awareness.
PATTERN NOTES
Traffic today is thin — 609 contacts, 559 unique aircraft against a 7-day average of 1,522. That's not a rounding error; something suppressed volume today. The dominant flow is eastbound at cruise altitude, consistent with normal West-to-East domestic routing. A dense cluster of regularly-scheduled flights — spanning Delta, United, Southwest, Republic, and SkyWest — simply did not appear. Over two hundred expected regulars are absent. No single cause is apparent from the picture data alone.
Canadian traffic (Air Jazz, WestJet, Cargojet series) present in normal proportion for the corridor.
END OF DAILY AIR PICTURE