Improper Handling of Delta Re-route / Diversions

There’s been an interesting fringe case happening with Delta 583 (Detroit DTW - Shanghai PVG) recently. Runway work at DTW has meant the 744 can’t depart with the required fuel load, so they’ve been making a stop at MSP for fuel.

Unfortunately, FlightAware hasn’t picked up on this nearly as well as some other large tracking platforms have. As of right now (9:30 AM CDT), DAL 583 is showing a Minneapolis stop on Google, FlightRadar24 and Delta’s site, but, just shows as DTW-PVG on FlightAware. No push notifications via FXML2, nothing on my 5:00 AM CDT poll of the FXML3 AirportBoard.

The same scenario happened a few days ago on Tuesday, September 12. While the other platforms picked up on the MSP portion of the flight early in the day, FlightAware didn’t handle it very well - the initial push notification had good info (if arriving later than news from other platforms did), but subsequent updates were all over the board.

What actually happened:

  • Departed DTW 4:44 PM EDT
  • Arrived MSP 4:59 PM CDT
  • Departed MSP 7:09 PM CDT

Select data from FlightAware:

  • Push notification at 3:45 PM CDT that DAL583 would arrive MSP Tue at 4:58 PM
  • Push notification at 3:48 PM CDT that DAL583 would depart MSP Tue at 3:33 PM
  • AirportBoards at 7:00 PM CDT report DAL583 diverted to MSP at 6:47 PM
  • Push notification at 7:10 PM CDT report DAL583 departed MSP 7:09 PM

Pertinent Flight IDs for the September 12 DAL 583 flights:

  • DAL583-1505249307-14-0-47
  • DAL583-1505031585-airline-0086
  • DAL583-1505249078-18-0-85

Update - something similar happening today with a couple of DAL flights - 583 and 159 are making stops in ANC and MSP today.

Thanks for the eagle eyes on that. We’re looking at why we’re not picking up those updates.

1 Like