u/Outrageous-Ant2919

A US Navy MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone, first picked up over Jordan at 02:16 UTC, then 1,036 NM across Saudi Arabia to the Persian Gulf at 46,000 ft.

https://reddit.com/link/1um68e7/video/ahn0giibhyah1/player

Saw the Mentour Pilot video about LO155 (Warsaw → Tel Aviv, June 30). The flight that squawked 7500 and got a fighter escort before diverting to Burgas. He mentioned the squawk happened “for an instant over Turkey” and that FR24 doesn’t display it.

So I got curious and decided to pull data from a few networks. Started with Wingbits for the flight. That shows very different story than "happened for an instant".

• The aircraft (A320, LZ-EAB, flying as LOT5FM) squawked 7500 continuously for 72 minutes, from 10:28 to 11:40 UTC
• It started over Romania (near Cluj), not Turkey, and ran the whole way down across Bulgaria
• Every single 7500 message also had the transponder’s alert bit set, which the transponder sets itself when an emergency code is dialed in, so this was genuinely transmitted, not receiver noise
• At 11:40, right as they crossed into Turkish airspace, the crew re-dialed normal ATC codes (2424, then 2427)

Then I pulled FR24’s API data for the exact same flight. Zero 7500 anywhere. For precisely the 72-minute window where other data recorded 7500, their API returns squawk “4583”.

So obviously 4583 is not a possible squawk code. Squawks are four octal digits, 0 through 7. A transponder physically cannot transmit an 8. So it’s not that FR24’s receivers picked up something different, the value has been replaced.

I get why you might not want a hijack code flashing on a public map in real time. But this isn’t just hidden on the map, the historical API data has a fabricated value in it, with no indication anything was redacted. If they’d returned null or “redacted” that would be one thing, but a fake code that looks like data seems worse than showing nothing?

Anyone know if this is documented behavior? Is “4583” a known placeholder, or does the substitution value mean something? And does anyone know if they do the same for 7600/7700?

Attached a render of the flight from the raw data, red segment is the active 7500.

https://reddit.com/link/1ulljx4/video/ctt9dig06uah1/player