I have a question about FlightInfoEx data.
I was told the following:
'If a plane has departed then you can determine any delay by comparing the filed_departuretime with the actualdeparturetime."
So I am comparing that information live with what you are showing on your website for that same flight and I am not getting the same information. When I compared those 2 from FlightInfoEx for the current flight QXE2027. It returns a 60 second early difference where your app:
flightaware.com/live/flight/QXE2027
is showing 14 min early.
I am curious if you are using any other information to get this result. I did the math from the same information for filed_departuretime + filed_ete - estimatedarrivaltime and it was very close to the information you are displaying on the screen in your app. I was told I could use this to find the difference if the plane hasn’t yet departed.
I am just trying to build this application as accurate as possible. I don’t have it pulling live data for every field at the moment as it is in development and we are likely going to cache the information for a very limited time to save money on queries.
The current application resides here for both arrivals and departures.
192.249.112.63/~golws/
Thanks in advance
One of the limitations of FlightXML2 is that we do not expose the gate in and out estimated and actual times (these are the times the plane pushes back from or arrives at the gate). The filed_departuretime, actualdeparturetime, estimatedarrivaltime and actualarrivaltime are based on takeoff and landing times respectively. So if we look at that flight yesterday, QXE2027, FlightInfoEx has the filed_departuretime of 1491345300 and actualdeparturetime of 1491345240 which gives us a difference of 60 seconds. If you now look a the website and look at the right bar you’ll see that the scheduled vs actual takeoff time shows a 60 second difference which matches. The 10 minutes early pushback (or block_out) is what is shown above the map. For the arrival times, the scheduled landing/arrival time is filed_departuretime + filed_ete (converted to seconds). For that flight you’ll get 1491348960. The actualarrivaltime is 1491347940. The difference between those is 1020s or 17 mins. In this case it matches the website because we did not receive an actual block_in time for that flight so it used the difference in scheduled vs actual landing times to determine how early it is. We don’t always receive the block_in and block_out times depending on the airline.
I realize that doesn’t give you the information you’re really wanting (the gate in and out times), but at least explains the logic of what is happening and how it ties to information on the website. FlightXML3 replaces the Arrived/Scheduled/Enroute/Departed methods with a single AirportBoards method. The new method also includes the details from FlightInfoEx and the block_in and block_out times. So as soon as we get this out it should make your life easier.
Is there any kind of work around to get more accurate times?
Right now if I enable the logic functions to show late or early for the status in my app it basically shows everything that is scheduled as 9 or 10 minutes late because of the time the flights take to taxi I’m guessing.
It is also showing everything off by that much for all of the results I am displaying.
The only other thing I can think of to do would be add 10 minutes to the time so it doesn’t show the on time stuff as off.
If you went to look at the app I have the main data cached and the live event functions turned off to save money while in development.
