Is the departure time when they pushback or is it wheels up time?
It’s when we get a departure message ( 
), which is usually shortly after wheels up, but sometimes doesn’t come until the plane has climbed a few thousand feet.
no I know that I was talking about scheduled departures. It was scheduled for 10:18 I just didn’t know if that was the pushback time or not.
For airlines, the scheduled departure time is the time the flight is scheduled to push.
I believe from experience that FA starts getting info when radar contact is made, usually with departure controller. Then add the six minute delay to that info. I also believe the same on approach, about the time the approach controller hands the aircraft off to the tower, unless its an actual ILS or the pilot cancel IFR early.
It’s push back time. If it were wheels-up time, half of us would be missing our flights, haha.
Airlines like to close the boarding door 10 minutes prior to departure, it usually takes a few minutes to give the FA’s the final paperwork and the passenger count. And we all know just how long it takes those rampers to finish loading our bags.
If you read the FAQs, it says that departure time on this site is “wheels up” time, and not the time of departure from the gate. This explains why their departure times are later than those from the airlines, which are push back time.
Welcome aboard, Amberc!
Listen to him, ASFreqFlyer, for although he joined a day later than you did, he has more knowledge of FlightAware because he actually took the time to read the FAQ’s.
From reading through the responses I think they are each talking about different things. One is talking about the airline schedule and the other is talking about the scheduled time showing on FA.