Alert failure (again)

FlightAware General
1

Today I logged on to Flightaware on my Windows computer and selected My Alerts to set up Alerts for two flights my son is taking.

The flights are today 21 Aug 2019.

Thai flights 466 and 950.

I dutifully filled it in and checked the dates and other fields and clicked on Set Up Alert.

I admit to foolishly NOT checking the next screen to see if the details were correct but when the plane was past due for takeoff and I received no message I re-checked the Alert page and the date is now Yesterday 20 Aug 2019.

This is not an uncommon occurrence.

My time zone is (UTC+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

Is it just me or are others setting up alerts and failing to be alerted?

Thanks,

S.

Edit

I just tried to add the Alert for the same flight again and it responded that the Alert already existed.

There is no Alert for 21 Aug 2019 but there is an alert for 20 Aug 2019.

How do I set up an Alert for today (preferably before the plane lands in BKK)

S

Another EDIT

I just checked to see where TG466 is and it has JUST gone wheels up and is 2 hours late.

EDIT

I am looking at the flight TG466/THA466 which has just taken off.

There is a big blue button in the top right labelled Edit Notifications. I clicked on that and it took me to the alert page for THA466 for YESTERDAY 20 Aug 2019.

1 Like
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Seems it’s a problem with specifically selecting the date.

I’ve reproduced your problem with it saving an alert for the 20th when it was displaying the 21st.

But if you click the date and actually select the 21st from the calendar, it works fine.

2 Likes
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Thanks for finding that.

I’ll try and remember next time I set an Alert that today’s date is not today’s date until you click on today’s date and select today’s date otherwise today’s date is actually yesterday’s date and in most cases yesterday’s flight will have already landed and the Alert will never happen.

Is this happening to other users or is no-one else using the My Alerts system?

I was using it frequently but this sort of failure has made it unreliable.

S.

4

Not just you.
I’ve reported this exact behavior and just got “can’t reproduce the problem” from support.

My head hearts reading that, but tragically, that seems to be the case.

Without any evidence, my guess is that some code uses local (Huston) time as the reference and fails to cope with those of us who aren’t living in the past (ie. UTC+n time zones)

Edit:

A search of the forum shows this has been reported many times.The oldest I found on a very brief search is 2011.
.

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This has actually happened to me in the past too but… I could never reproduce it afterwards. The note about having to select the date from the calendar is highly suspicious, let me ask the web team about it.

In a past job we had a maddening UI bug which the end users could reproduce it on demand but when you put a developer in front of the software, it never happened. Turned out that it was a bug that was specific to using the mouse to select from a dropdown; of course the developer knew the interface inside out and was using the keyboard shortcuts all the time… It took days to work out what was happening. I wonder if this is the same sort of thing.

(I’m also reminded of https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52pw/i_cant_log_in_when_i_stand_up/)

2 Likes
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Hi obj, any progress on this?
I was getting ready to head out to the airport to pickup the missus when she phoned (from europe).

The conversation went something like:
“Hi, did you miss your flight?”
“No, my flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow”

Oh, I thought. Close call - Time to look for an alternate site?