How do you verify "flight arrived"?

You list N171MA as having arrived 3 days ago–in reality it crashed in Florida on Friday Aug 25 killing the occupants. How do you list it as having “arrived”?

Read the FAQs. Flightaware mirrors what the FAA is reporting.

The FAA doesn’t provide any special messages to indicate that an aircraft has crashed. Flights end with either an arrival or cancellation message; FlightAware will mark a flight as arrived when either message is recieved.