I have a couple suggestions for alerts based on how I use them, which is 99% of the time going to pick someone up at the airport (KPHX for me).
An option to send an alert when a flight is a certain distance away from the destination. If I could set this up to essentially tell me when the flight is 40nm out or so, I’d know when to leave my house perfectly pretty much every time.
An option to automatically delete the alert after the flight has landed. I often forget to go back into flightaware and delete it after I get home and then I get a bunch of text messages about the next leg of the flight etc - this can be bad late at night lol…
You might want to think about this one. Just because the plane is X distance from the airport doesn’t mean that you could expect it to land at Y time. There are many variables that could cause the aircraft to be late at the gate such as a go-around, no room at the gate (i.e. having to wait for an open gate), longer than usual taxi time, etc.
If you are picking someone up at the airport, you should see if the airline has alerts available. Don’t forget that FlightAware does record the wheels-down time and not the time at the gate. As alluded to above, that wheels-down to at-the-gate time could be longer than you expect.
If I’m picking up someone at the airport and it has a decent place to view the aircraft, my perfect time at the airport would be an hour or two (at least) before the flight arrives.
Oh I know, it’s just that usually in 90% of the cases if I leave when the plane is around that distance away coming down the arrival, I get there in time… I know it wouldn’t work perfectly every time, not what I’m asking for.
damiross, thanks for bringing back that memory lol…One time I landed at KPHX on 25L and we rolled out to the end…had to taxi all the way back to the America West gates…way on the northeast side next to the commuters. Took 18 minutes that day, in an A319 with a suddenly failing air con.
