I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that they wish airlines would just be more honest with them about delays. Sure, airlines promise to update you every 15 minutes these days (yeah, that happens), but often, the agents aren’t given all the information they need to keep you up to date. That’s why when I received a note from the guys behind FLTAdvisor, I immediately saw some promise in the idea.
FLTAdvisor’s goal is to find out if a flight is really going to be on time, despite what the airline says. The idea is great, but can they pull it off? So far, so good, but keep in mind that you will have to pay for it. (More that later.)
For the most part, customer service agents and passengers are constrained by whatever the systems are displaying for actual flight time information, but we all know that’s not the whole story. I can often trace a plane back a couple legs to see that it’s going to be late, but airlines generally suck about letting us know about that for fear that aircraft changes may be made and it won’t be accurate.
FLTAdvisor is full of operations guys that used to work for airlines, and they put together this model to help find delays earlier. Yeah, they trace planes back to see if there are delays already, but they do a lot more than that. They use a lot of assumptions about how quickly airplanes can turn around, which runways are operating that day, etc to come up with an accurate prediction. I spoke with John King at the company, and he said that so far accuracy has been very good. I decided to put it to the test.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t as easy as I had thought. I picked a handful of flights, and somehow they all ended up being on time. (This even includes a flight from JFK to Philly on a bad weather day. Come on!) But then I found one. United flight 1166 from SFO to LAX on Sunday, Feb 15 (I wrote this post a little while ago). Here’s what I received. My first email came in at 230p (you can choose when emails should be sent).
United 1166 San Francisco-Los Angeles:
FltAdvisor analysis indicates your departure from San Francisco may be at 5:42 PM, 12 mins late.
FltAdvisor analysis indicates your aircraft is flying from San Francisco to Santa Ana and is currently 80 mins late.
Your aircraft is routed through Santa Ana and then back to San Francisco.
SFO Weather/Rain may cause additional delays.
United reports your 5:30 PM departure from San Francisco is on-time.
Additional Information:
Current Departure Gate 73
Estimated Arrival in LAX at 6:55 PM
Current Arrival Gate 70B
Scheduled – 735 type aircraft.
The following information is from the FAA’s ATC Command Center.
These are general airport conditions and are not flight-specific.
Real-Time Airport Delays for SFO:
Due to WEATHER / WIND, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, CA (SFO). This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 2 hours and 58 minutes.
Delays by Destination:
No destination-specific delays are being reported.
Excellent. My plane was already looking to be in bad shape, so at least I could mentally prepare for the delay. There’s also an option in each email to click for alternate flights. It shows those with the actual expected times of departure for those as well, so that’s a helpful tool if you really need to be somewhere. At 430p, an hour before the original departure time of the flight, the half-hourly updates started pouring in.
- 430p: my flight would now be 71 minutes late because the plane was stuck in Orange County (United.com said 55 minutes late)
- 500p and 530p: once the plane had left Orange County, it said the flight would be 90 minutes late
- 6p: revised downward, probably due to lifting traffic restrictions, saying that it would be only 68 minutes late
- 630p: pushed it up again and said it would be 80 minutes late, 10 minutes from the time of that email
Ultimately, the plane ended up departing 75 minutes late, so certainly within an acceptable range. The most important thing here is that FLTAdvisor gave me notice that a delay was a good possibility long before United did. Were my flight times very important, I could have switched to an earlier flight (that probably also would have been delayed) before others would even know about it.
Yes, it’s always possible that United could have switched planes at SFO and made the flight go on time, and that’s why you can never rely completely on this service. (They’ll send you an email as soon as they see a move like that happening.) But it’s a great early warning system that helps set expectations.
Of course, something like this isn’t going to be free as I mentioned earlier. It’s either $8 a month ($88 a year) or you can buy packets that give you a certain number of flights to track. For example, 10 flights will cost you $15.
If I were a frequent business traveler, I imagine that would be extremely helpful.
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29 Comments on "FLTAdvisor Tells You If Your Flight is Really On Time"
I wonder how long it will take until United decides to not let others make money off of their information. Like they did with Seatcounter and other services that used to show award seat and upgrade availability until they go a letter from United.
Oliver – I’m not sure how United (or anyone else) could prevent these guys from doing this. It’s all publicly available information and they’re just applying their knowledge to use that info for good.
Thats right. You can more or less do it all yourself if you have a load of time on your hands…
Great share of this site Cranky. Thanks a ton. I look forward to giving it a real test over the next few weeks with these flights I have to travel on between the 03/26 and 04/14…….
BOG-MIA-JFK
JFK-LAX
LAX-LHR
LHR-JFK-LAX
LAX-JFK-YYZ
YYZ-JFK-LAX
LAX-MIA-BOG
Another snag is that airlines often change equipment when flights are running way behind. You could see your flight is running 80 minutes late and plan accordingly only to find out they changed equipment 2 hours before scheduled departure and are now leaving on time, without you.
“FLTAdvisor Tells You If You’re Flight is Really On Time”
Great story. Poor grammar.
Jon – Damn, and that’s a mistake that I absolutely HATE when others make. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ve fixed the title, but clearly I need a break. . .
David Thompson – Thru each airline I’ve ever flown or been associated with I can share with you that the operational marching order was the same – “Barring a mechanical, Internationals leave on time.”
LEAVE on time. Arrivals in to LHR, as you are doubtless aware, is another story. Otherwise, airlines and airport authorities are, for once, on the same page regarding international flights, especially the fuel heavy ones like Australia, Hong Kong and West Coast to Europe. They are exempt from ATC 99% of the time. Weather (non-controllable) and mechanicals (controllable) aside, they go.
Or…I could just forget the fee and take early morning flights. For an upcoming trip I booked the earliest flight possible. For a 6am departure the equipment arrives at the night before at 11:50pm. That leaves a good 6 hour cushion for delays. Helps me sleep through the night better and doesn’t cost me a thing.
Cranky, Thank you for this review. As a long time frequent flyer, I welcome any improvement in the information about my flight. Nothing I have used before has been perfect and especially the info from the airlines. From my experience, yes maybe the airlines Ops Mgr knows something, but that doesn’t mean the airline is going to tell you until at best the last minute. Also, these days most airlines don’t have extra planes around to substitute.
The Travelling Optimist: Thanks. Yes, that does more or less apply.. I’m Executive Platinum with AA so I have a general idea… LOL. Thanks for the heads up though! ;-)
JK – If you want to see the history, FlightStats On Time Rating is a great resource. It gives you historical info for the last two months, so you can really dig in.
Nice site – seems to do similar to what I often do manually, but without the hassle.
I guess it would work better for flights from outstations where a/c & crew substitutions are less likely, not so good for flights from hubs – at least that is the case for my manual processes.
Given I can’t rely on this info in making decisions, I’m not sure I’d pay for it.
To me it makes no sense to check with people who have no current info and who are using past data to tell you if a flight will be on time. Check with the airline or your travel agent, they are the ones that have current info and that can protect you if there is a big delay.
Why does there always seem to be websites trying to lure you into believing them instead of the actual airline?
PS to Cranky – GREAT dialogue churner on this one, guy. Keep it up!