First for The Traveling Optimist: We pretty much agree with everything you brought up and we do appreciate and understand your thoughts. Most of us at fltadvisor have long backgrounds in airline operations and in airline information technology. For instance I have been the CIO at three airlines – one of the really big ones and two startups. We will never have as good an understanding of what is happening with an airline’s aircraft as the airline does inside its operations control center (OCC). We probably will never have access to crew delay information and we sure don’t know what the pilot or line mechanic is entering in the maintenance log for each aircraft. We do pick up on those delay situations as soon as the airline reports them but we have no way of predicting them.

Background info:

Most of us at fltadvisor are very frequent flyers typically averaging three segments per week. We have a consulting company that as one of its service lines provides advice to airlines on technology and operating efficiency. We are “Platinum”on several carriers. We initially built fltadvisor just for ourselves. We were doing the upline analysis by hand (time consuming) and because we were frustrated that the airlines weren’t telling us what was happening on our flights until it was too late for us to look at taking a different flight. Having worked in airlines we know that even when the airline OCC knows an aircraft is running late, the airline customer service people restrict that information and when (or if) it is passed on to the customer. All for good (sort of) reasons. The first is they don’t want inaccurate information to go out. What if they told their passengers three hours ahead of time that their flight would be late and then their OCC found a way to bring it back on time? (Note: This actually happens anyway – twice this year the airline has called me to let me know my 5PM flight was going to leave at 6PM. I showed up at 5PM and watched it back away from the gate at 5PM – on time). The second reason is that when passengers change flights it creates extra work for the customer service people.

We don’t have those constraints at fltadvisor so we actually do give warnings well ahead of the airlines most of the time. Given all that – we are still just providing an additional (but sorely missing) data point for the real airline travelers out there. Most of our customers are people who travel a lot and who want some advance information on when their flights might be running late. They want to get to meetings on time, avoid unnecessary hotel nights, and want to get back home at a reasonable time at the end of the week – just like we do. They want to know how much time they will really have to make connections (we can track multiple legs and predict the connection time). They want to know what the alternate flights are and how they are really running (not just their scheduled times).

Now just some general comments on what we do:

Most of the time we can determine where an aircraft is coming from well before it gets to the flight segment a fltadvisor customer is flying. Then we can see what the airline is reporting on that aircraft long before it flies their segment. We know if it’s running on time or behind schedule many hours before it flies the customer’s segment. We can do this over the whole world – not just in the USA.

We then look at the routing for that aircraft and which segments it is flying and which airports it is coming through. We analyze weather impact, congestion at airports (including taxi times which we get from out, off, on, in (OOOI) messages from the airlines). We analyze how much time a late aircraft can make through faster turns at the gates or by using the padding that airlines include in their scheduled flight times vs. the actual flight times. We also have to understand where an airline might decide to substitute another aircraft to keep a flight on time. Generally this could happen in an airline’s hubs or when there has been a cancellation earlier in the day and we know there is a spare aircraft sitting there.

All of that is just part of the equation. We also staff a 7/24 OCC of our own – with experienced airline people (combined over 60 years of direct experience). These people have an advanced global dashboard created by fltadvisor that tracks all of our customer’s flights. We can analyze specific situations affecting flights and can add or subtract time to the computer generated analysis before the final tracking messages are sent out to our customers. Our OCC staff can also add information to the tracking messages of all those people whose aircraft are specifically impacted by some special situation. For instance if the wind is blowing to hard in the wrong direction at LaGuardia airport in New York, we know they will be restricted to using only one of the two runways. So we add time to all the aircraft flying through LaGuardia to account for the extra delays we expect. We would do the same if we saw a severe thunderstorm going over Dallas at 2 PM this afternoon. We would add time to those aircraft traversing Dallas during that period if we thought it necessary.

We don’t want a cluttered display so we don’t sell advertising. We do have to pay for our 7/24 OCC staff so we do charge for the service. Most of the people who use us only use their PC to create their account. From that point on they tend to use their cell phones to receive tracking messages. The tracking messages can be sent to any e-mail account worldwide. People with Blackberries with push e-mail tend to send to that address. Most others send an SMS message to their cell phone e-mail address and then click the link in that SMS message when it arrives to get the detailed analysis (it pops up in their cell phone browser). Most people set up the myflights@fltadvisor.com email address at their airline or other booking site so that as they book new flights or change flights, fltadvisor gets a copy of their itinerary and sets up tracking automatically.

Bottom line – the main purpose of fltadvisor is to provide early warning of delay or connection risk. When you get that early warning you can start using other information – from weather.com, from the government (FAA, Eurocontrol), and specifically from the airline itself to finalize your decision. Don’t be surprised though when you call the airline. When you say that you are considering changing your flight because your assigned aircraft is running behind schedule, the customer service person in reservations or at the airport probably will not have that information in their customer service computer yet. Luckily for many frequent fliers we can usually make changes several hours ahead of time on day of travel without incurring those dreaded change fees.

Sorry to ramble on so but I though you might be interested in the full story about fltadvisor and we actually can and cannot do. Good flying to you all!

JimP is correct in that there is a lot of this going on but in also in some subtle ways rather than simply not disclosing alternate service on a competitor.

Airlines are required by Rule 240, in general, to protect their customers on alternate service up to and including other airlines if the customer is delayed more than 2 hours domestically and I believe 4 hours internationally.

Someone who gets huffy because he or she was “inconvenienced” by 30-45 minutes does not qualify for that mandatory obligation. Further, the fare rules of most discounted tickets automatically mean other airlines will not accept the revenue (it’s not worth the electronic paper it’s written on for them to bother in most cases).

So, one of two things generally need to exist before huffing off to the competition: Have a “flexible” unrestricted or full fare ticket that they will gladly accept and/or be inconvenienced by more than 2 hours. Free FFY tickets are always out of the question short of a bilateral agreement between airline alliance carriers. Otherwise, you’re more than welcome to try the other guys, but you may end up out of pocket more than you are already and the chances of reimbursement/compensation for your unilateral choice from your first carrier is slim to none.

Global Traveller – That’s exactly it. Many of us can try to piece this together manually, but often, frequent fliers don’t have the time for that. They also don’t have the ability to connect the dots unless they’re on the more savvy side. Continental actually makes it much easier by telling you where you inbound aircraft is coming from in their flight status application, but most others make it tougher.

JK – Very good point. If you want to know what is actually causing the delay, then you’d need to get the airline to give you info, but even they don’t have it often. The delay system is set up poorly in that someone has to take the fall for the delay. So there are delay codes that blame different groups, and there is no detail on what happens. A group just gets blamed when the delay is assigned a code. That’s what you see on united.com, and you probably can’t get it any better unless the agent has a free form place to write what happened. It would be nice if they would make that publicly available, but instead you get stuck with “customer relations,” which could mean almost anything. It also may not tell us the full story because there could have been many angles at work here.

David SF east bay – This isn’t simply using historical data. This is using real time data and applying some logic to it. The airlines have this info, but as Optimist says, they’re probably too worried about it changing so they don’t want to release it. This site will just give you all that info that they dig up for you after they’ve applied some logic. It’s just another tool to use.

Alex – I think the key here is how you look at the product. Can it give you a leg up and maybe allow you to make alternate plans before others take all the seats on earlier flights? Yeah. Can you trust it to always be right and show up when it tells you? No way. It just gives you an extra level of transparency about what’s happening, and for me, piece of mind goes a long way. (Just a note – I don’t fly a ton, so I don’t subscribe. If I had a very important trip coming up, I would look at individual pricing plans just for the extra info.)

Nicholas – I doubt we’ll see any airline go with this – they have much of this info but they don’t want to release it for the legal reasons that have been brought up. They only want to tell passengers information that is highly unlikely to change. This info is more likely to change as aircraft swaps and other things occur, so they probably will continue to shy away from sharing so much info.

A half hour ago, looked outside my house watching UA1260 from MCO head north to make a south landing at IAD. I see that just about this time UA flights from SFO, DEN, ORD, and Beijing were just about to land. All save the ORD (flight 722) left on-time or early…the ORD flight left 2 minutes late. All arrived IAD early, even the ORD flight, 6 minutes early. Of course, the ORD flight had to have a “Reason,” “Schedule change due to Airport Operations.” [shown both for ORD and IAD, so I guess both airports must have had problems!] Sure!

As Optimist said, probably a requirement to avoid litigationwhenever a flight leaves late, regardless of whether it arrives on time. Gottahave a reason. Pick one, whatever, who cares!

Then there was UA966 from LAX to IAD this morning. Canceled! No reasons given. Then, 924 LAX to IAD left an hour and a half late, due in tonight an hour 18 minutes late. “Reason.” “Schedule change due to Customer Relations.” [I trust "customer relations" is code for something..., UA wouldn't want the rest of us to know.] FightStats sure has lot of data on this showing many, many changes made, but nothing as to why. So, where are we? Maybe if I offered to pay UA for more info?

Now, I wonder which airline will be the first one to ditch their internal reporting and go with FLTAdvisor? Given that providing flight arrival isn’t their core expertise (and it shows) I can see them doing this as it would provide their customers better data, and probably cost them less. Theoretically FLTAdvisor could even provide more accurate data for an airline that decides to work with it as they could gain access to the airline’s internal data.

So i can see its uses around the airport. However i think the key problem here is essentially a legal one. I’m sure that these guys are great at what they do but I’m only ever going to rely on what the airline tell me because thats what they are legally responsible for. In reality missing a flight and claiming that your “Sorry, my subscription to FltAdvisor told me the flight was delay 2hrs” isn’t going to get me anywhere. No matter how great there product and predictions are I’m not sure they can get round that.

Why does there always seem to be websites trying to lure you into believing them instead of the actual airline?

I would suspect that as FLT ADVISOR begins to build itself a nice historical database, it will begin to factor in tribal knowledge, such as “in xx% of the time that flt XXX is delayed by more than XX minutes at airport XXX, then an equipment change occurs.” They could then so advise.

It might even be able to make simlar assumptions on crew cancelations. i.e. at Airpot XXX, if flight XXX is delayed more than XXX minutes, the flight is cancelled XX% of the time.

Or, the knowledge that at airport XXX, no equipment change ever occurs because there is none to be had at that station.

they cal also look at individual airports, i.e. Newark, and if thunderstorms roll in, make a general prediction of delays to all flights — even if the individual airlines are holding the line, avoiding any anncounement for fear of losing pax.

All-in-all, a good idea
Cheers,