Flight Aware versus Flight Radar information detail

FlightAware General
1

Just curious if anyone could help me understand if the two companies have different objectives, focus, etc.

I’ve noticed since I’ve had my FlightFeeder (and also from using the web sites) that FlightAware frequently does not have information that is nominally displayed by FlightRadar24 for the same flights.

Here is an example from this morning: US Air Force KC-135, call sign ARRIS02, screen grabs attached….

I’m curious if there are ‘agreements’ in place between FlightAware and the military for instance precluding the display of certain information. Or, is it that FlightAware just doesn’t have connections to all the data feeds? I imagine that there is a need to coalesce, sort, reconcile data from various sources; perhaps FlightAware has not reached that level yet?

I’m not criticizing, so please don’t flame me…. I’m just trying to understand what are the challenges or obstacles to FlightAware being able to present a greater level of detailed information about flights….

Flight ARRIS02 on my FlightAware Flight Feeder Orange display

ARRIS02-FA-my-FlightFeeder
ARRIS02-FA-my-FlightFeeder3258×2890 1.76 MB

I am only allowed to include one image or 2 links in a post (a curious restriction).

ARRIS02 on Flight Aware web site

ARRIS02 on FlightRadar24 web site

The ADS-B Exchange web site also has a lot more data on this flight than does FlightAware

2

Can you be more specific what data elements you’re asking about? I see the callsign, origin, departure time, and track on ARRIS02 Flight Tracking and History 19-Apr-2024 (KEDW - FlightAware

3

Well, specifically, the “Aircraft details”

For almost all military flights and many “executive jets” that don’t want to be tracked, I see basically no information for “Aircraft details” whereas FlightRadar24 has a lot of details for the exact same call sign and plane (as verified by the map display that it’s the same physical flight).

4

Additionally, a related scenario is this…

I have previously filed bugs with FlightAware for cases where the flight details page did something like “landed 2 months ago” despite the fact that there was a plane clearly flying in the sky…! The explanation I received from FlightAware tech support was that the military often reuses call signs.

Yet, FlightRadar is able to display information about the actual flight in progress; it is able to ‘figure out’ that there is an actual aircraft in flight, and presents the data for that flight and that aircraft.

I won’t get into all the nitty-gritty SQL and database and data mining discussions here. But clearly the upshot is that the data is available technically.

Thus I’m wondering if the problem is:

  • Policy or business decision
  • Feature or capability in development but not yet there
  • Legal restrictions
  • Other