Late morning, early afternoon busy for the Sicilian and Sardinian channels.
In fact, we recorded three different missions, carried out mainly south of Sardinia by aircraft that took off from Sigonella and Decimomannu:
- a pair of RAF Boeing P-8As (reg. ZP806 and ZP809) that took off from Sigonella carried out a mission (probably) in the Sardinian channel. The aircraft flew with the ADS-B switched on during the first and last parts of the flight, switching it off during the operational mission. Comparing the time the transponder was switched off (a little over an hour), we can assume that the mission took place south of Sardinia;
- an Italian Air Force Beech B.350 SPYDR (reg. MM62300) which took off from Decimomannu AB headed towards the sea south of Sardinia and then switched off the transponder. This is not the first time that we have recorded such missions carried out by this aircraft (see here) and we do not know if the mission is related to that of the British Poseidon, but there is no doubt that the skies over the Mediterranean these days are very busy