Melburnian1
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2013
- Posts
- 25,390
www.flightradar24.com and FlightAware - Flight Tracker / Flight Status / Flight Tracking are deservedly popular and mostly useful resources.
However users should be aware that they can be misleading in at least a couple of ways.
Because it may not always have access to the various transmissions the airlines use - such as ACARS (Aircraft communications addressing and reporting system), FR24 tends to exaggerate likely delays. A typical error might be for it to assume that a flight that departed Sydney an hour late will arrive Hong Kong an hour late, when in fact it may pick up time on a gate-to-gate basis.
A more recent apparent error is that when an airline amends a time of departure due to a delay, FlightAware changes the departure time to make it look as if it is the scheduled time.
For instance on Monday 13 March 2017, QF19, the 1225 SYD to MNL was delayed in Sydney. Instead of keeping the departure time at the scheduled 1225 and therefore reporting it as a predicted 20 minutes late in pushing back at a projected 1245, FlightAware claimed that a 1245 hours departure would be 'on time.'
None of this takes away from how both these sites can be of great assistance to travellers, but it is useful to have these quirks in the back of one's mind.
There are naturally many other changes that can occur. For instance, because a flight left 20 minutes late it may run into more aviation 'traffic' close to its destination than would have been the case with a punctual departure, so that cannot always be predicted prior to departure or in the early and middle stages of a flight because the short distance RPT aircraft will not have yet departed from their airport of origin.
However users should be aware that they can be misleading in at least a couple of ways.
Because it may not always have access to the various transmissions the airlines use - such as ACARS (Aircraft communications addressing and reporting system), FR24 tends to exaggerate likely delays. A typical error might be for it to assume that a flight that departed Sydney an hour late will arrive Hong Kong an hour late, when in fact it may pick up time on a gate-to-gate basis.
A more recent apparent error is that when an airline amends a time of departure due to a delay, FlightAware changes the departure time to make it look as if it is the scheduled time.
For instance on Monday 13 March 2017, QF19, the 1225 SYD to MNL was delayed in Sydney. Instead of keeping the departure time at the scheduled 1225 and therefore reporting it as a predicted 20 minutes late in pushing back at a projected 1245, FlightAware claimed that a 1245 hours departure would be 'on time.'
None of this takes away from how both these sites can be of great assistance to travellers, but it is useful to have these quirks in the back of one's mind.
There are naturally many other changes that can occur. For instance, because a flight left 20 minutes late it may run into more aviation 'traffic' close to its destination than would have been the case with a punctual departure, so that cannot always be predicted prior to departure or in the early and middle stages of a flight because the short distance RPT aircraft will not have yet departed from their airport of origin.
