I have had MyTraffic 2005 for about 6 months and have never passed an AI heliopter in flight (seen a few on airports and understand you can find them on carriers, but I've never seen one of those either!) so it was a treat yesterday when one zoomed past on its way to a NAS in Nevada. Thing is, I was at 15K and he was at FL180. Don't know much about helicopters, but was just curious if they fly in Class A in the real world or whether this was just an AI flight plan anomoly courtesy of Mytraffic 2005. I recall that they are sometimes used on Mt Everest, so i suppose they must be able to fly up in the thin air and have supplemental OXG. no biggy, just curious.

There are alot of variants of chinooks but most service ceilings are around 8500ft up to 15000. Correct me if Im wrong.However there are some helicopters that can operate at very high altitudes. But unlike aircraft, there are no advantages,only negatives to flying high.On May 14th, 2005 at 7h08 (local time), a serial Ecureuil/AStar AS 350 B3 piloted by the EUROCOPTER X-test pilot Didier Delsalle, landed at 8,850 meters (29,035ft) on the top of the Mount Everest.But yes, it is very rare to ever see a helicopter over 5000ft.BTW-I have MYtraffic 2006 and on occasion have seen unusual things. One one flight, ATC kept repeating to a Cessna 172 over and over, climb and maintain 60,000!

I have MyTraffic 2006 (not 2005, sorry) as well and I used to get that too on occasion. I used AI traffic Mover and went into each of the bgls and corrected all the flight level 50+ plans. I guess Dick Ratan was piloting that Cessna you observed and he is likely still climbing.

The Chinook's service ceiling is 22,100 feetHere's the link:http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avch47.html