New Feature? Local and Outside FAA Area Flights?

Hi everyone,

After FA was offline for a couple of hours I logged in now and went to my home airport, MROC and found myself with a HUGE surprise.

So it seems that in the new upgrades, domestic and flights outside the FAA coverage area are being displayed.

At first I thought how could this be possible, but after thinking a while, I guess Flightaware loaded the scheduled flights for the whole world and these are showing up everywhere, you can see flights within Europe, Asia, South, Central America and more.

I guess there will be no live time tracking for these flights unless the airline provides the details, such as the system Flightstats.com uses. Reading the upgrade announcement I guess this change is due to this:

FlightAware now offers airline schedules well in advance of the 30 minute - 2 hour window previously displayed. Users can view airline schedules many hours before a flight is scheduled to depart.

Possibly meant to be only for FAA-coverage-area flights it has somehow gone to the whole World.

I wish I am mistaken and that the FAA has extended their coverage area to rest of the World (I really doubt this!).

Hopefully some one from the FA team can clear this up.

Thanks for your attention!

Tomas Cubero.
San Jose, CR

It actually is getting very annoying, too much rubbish blocking the neat view of real-time flights from the US, is there any way to disable this new feature per account?

Thanks!
Tomas.

There appears to be an error when looking at the OAK listing for scheduled departures.

As of now (0947PDT/18 Mar), there are two flights shown as below:

APC1962 Ukiah Muni (KUKI) 08:22 PDT 09:13 PDT
APC1960 Monterey Peninsula (KMRY) 08:25 PDT 08:59 PDT

I don’t think APC has started flying in the SF Bay Area. These look more like flights for AMF.

Where (URL) is this?

Hi,

Well from last night to today it has improved a bit but look at my local airport all of those useless ICL flights:

flightaware.com/live/airport/MROC/enroute

Also there are a ton of flights inside central america, such as MROC-MGGT and MROC-MPTO etc which are impossible to track real time and are just being a nuisance there.

flightaware.com/live/airport/SCEL/enroute

All the flights like SAEZ-SCEL and SPIM-SCEL are just blocking the view of actual flights from the US.

If you check MGGT airport:

flightaware.com/live/airport/MGGT/enroute

There are a series of CLG “Chalair” flights which are obsolete from years ago and these are appearing all around the caribbean.

flightaware.com/live/airport/TNCM/enroute

More CLG flights there.

It has gotten better, last night I checked airports in europe and found many flights inside europe, tonnes of them just blocking the view of regular traffic.

There are also some flights which #s are obsolete and are being displayed as scheduled:

flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW2166
flightaware.com/live/flight/KLM787

Hope this can be fixed, I am not against showing scheduled flights BUT which can be later tracked in real time, just showing a scheduled flight that does never move in terms of live tracking or that doesn’t exist is going backwards in improvements.

Thanks!
Tomas.

Agreed with Tomas (above) and also members lancasterperch and robk on another thread. I’ve just been looking at my local airfields and there are page after page of scheduled flights for days in advance, most of which aren’t even real flights. I wondered what the hell was happening til I saw these threads.

Please remove this pointless new feature and stick to what you do best - tracking real time flights.

And another one:
flightaware.com/live/flight/AIC112
This is Air India, FA correctly shows the JFK-LHR leg but also now shows the LHR-New Delhi leg but only as a scheduled flight, no actual flight info.

Along the lines of the previous comments it would be nice if FA drops late flights sooner than 24 hours. If the flight has not filed a new flight plan I think 90 minutes is good enough. Most flights later than this should have either been canceled or will have filed a new departure time. At the busier airports the entire “scheduled departures” box is completely full of these flights quite often.

John

Agree with all of you guys, I really think this feature should be removed, because most of us want just to track flights in real time. At least for me its pointless to watch just a scheduled flight that is just making the real flights tracking impossible.

For example, yesterday a Lifeguard jet arrived to my airport (MROC) and it did appeared on the flightaware en route map, but never appeared on the scheduled board. This new feature is just making all the real and interesting flights dissapear.

Another example was yesterday. I love to track Cargo flights so I can go to MROC and make some spotting of them. Yesterday got an Arrow Cargo DC-8 but searching on flightaware it never appeared.

I’m not saying this new feature of showing scheduled flights is bad, I’m just saying that if there is any chance of making the tracking system good as always again, it will be great. I know it is very difficult making a site like this show that kind of information, and by the way, you guys have made a great work with this page, but if there is any way to go back to the normal tracking I will really appreciate it

Thanks!

Josue, it’s funny you should mention the real flights not showing - the same thing is also happening at BFI. Ever since this new feature was introduced it’s caused havoc with the real data. Now real flights aren’t showing at all and are getting stuck in the scheduled departure lists.

The last 3 delivery flights out of BFI have all failed to show up in the departure list - RYR800E, RYR800F, ASA9403. I know all 3 have departed for a fact, and as those callsigns too.

Even old data is being affected too. Loads of flights within the past couple of months have been wiped altogether. Two examples being RYR800C which was originally showing on FA as 0405z dept on 14 March KBFI-EIDW and RYR800D on same day, 0438z departure. I know they were showing because that’s where I got the info for my site from. Now neither are showing and neither are RYR800C from 21 Sep last year, RYR800D from 26 Sep, RYR800E from 28 Sep, RYR800F from 4 Oct which were all showing fine until this new feature. It’s wrecked the whole site and they should scrap it w/e/f :angry: .

I’ve no idea what they were thinking when they introduced this scheduled-weeks-in-advance feature. There are better ways to take on the OAG World Airline Timetable Guide than this way. :unamused:

RYR800C/D/E/F were automatically removed to declutter the site because we never received a departure message for them, only a flight plan. ASA9403 never appeared on the departure board due to the lack of a departure message, but the three flights still appear on the flight page because they had an arrival message.

No scheduled flight more than 24h in the past or future should appear anywhere on the website, including boards.

ASA9403 was going from BFI to SEA. If they made it to FL005 I’d be shocked. FYI BOE112 was here on Tuesday and was an Alaska 738 http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BOE112/history/20080318/1930Z/KBFI/KYKM Was also caught on take off Tuesday @ BFI

Thanks to Drewski for the great shot!

Hi again guys. In my last post I didn’t had a clear nice example of what the problem I and other people are having, but now I have one that is clear enough.

To MROC, Martinair Cargo comes one day weekly, this day is Friday arriving at 5:30 GMT aprox. The ID is MPH67. I always track this one because if it gets delayed, its always a pleasure to go and spot it. I’ve noticed today that MPH6715 appeared as scheduled to MROC. Its kind of weird because other times in other sites I’ve seen MPH6715 as scheduled but its basically the same flight, what I’m saying is that MPH67 = MPH6715.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MPH6715 there you have MPH6715 which route is EHAM - KMIA - MROC - SKBO, which is the same route that MPH67 has.

My point with this is that real flights are appearing (or I think so) just that they can get confused with the scheduled flights that are appearing on flightaware’s en route/scheduled flights.

Another example is FWL123. In some other sites it is scheduled as a daily flight with B763 arriving at 5:00 GMT, which actually is not true at all. Sometimes this particular flight goes to MGGT and then to MROC, sometimes it comes to MROC directly from KMIA. Other times it is not operated by B763, and it is replaced for B742, DC-10 and some weeks ago it was operated with B743. The problem now is that it is imposible to recognize which FWL123 is the real one and which one is the fake scheduled one.

If you guys could just take out the scheduled flights, that will be great because what some of us like more is to track real time flights, at least I prefer a real flight plan than a scheduled unknown flight that may be wrong.

Hope you flightaware staff can fix this problem soon and thanks for all the great work you do.

Looking at the scheduled to board for MROC, there are two FWL123:
FWL123 B763 Miami Intl (KMIA) Thu 23:17 EDT unknown Fri 05:44 GMT
FWL123 B742 Miami Intl (KMIA) Fri 23:17 EDT unknown Sat 05:48 GMT

One is last nights that we never received a departure (or arrival or cancellation) message for (but until it’s 24h old we aren’t willing to say it’s not just delayed) and the other is tonight’s scheduled flight. Both have the departure time in italics to indicate that it’s scheduled/proposed. I don’t understand the ambiguity here.

Splitting the scheduled to/enroute to board into two is an option we’ve considered, but we’d rather find a balance to keep information about all flights to an airport that have not yet arrived on one page.

I see, hope you guys can make the en route/scheduled flights in 2 boards, that will help a lot and thanks for your answer

Greetings

???

Correct me if I am wrong but either yourself or Dan said last year that historical flights are saved for 7 months !!??

because we never received a departure message for them, only a flight plan.

With all due respect, that is complete rubbish. The flights DID show in the departures column and with their correct timings as I double checked them with Ryanair Ops, but now they’re no longer there.

ASA9403 never appeared on the departure board due to the lack of a departure message, but the three flights still appear on the flight page because they had an arrival message.

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but doesn’t the above statement ring some alarm bells that there are some serious issues with the data?

No scheduled flight more than 24h in the past or future should appear anywhere on the website, including boards.

And again today another 2 flights which have vanished into thin air, same as the RYRs : namely BOE111 and BOE659 both of which initially showed up in the departed aircraft column but when checked a few hours later had completely disappeared from the listings. Both the flights did happen and as those callsigns - photo and radio proof. BOE111 dept at 1317 local and BOE659 dept at 1300 local, and both show up correctly on “other” trackers (out of KPAE). Clearly there’s a bug somewhere with your feed processing :frowning: .

Why has the original issue been deviated? It is getting VERY annoying to go into many airports and see a bunch of nonsense flights.

FlightAware PLEASE accept you messed up on this and find a quick fix for it, its gotten even worse that if you click on departures at MROC it is completely blank!

Get rid of those internal flights which are NEVER going to have real-time tracking and those ICL flights that do not exist. It is very simple as one of your staff said here, have a switch on or off if you want to view schedules or not, I would really be thankful for that, it is becoming a real pain to use FlightAware these days and people are being turned away from this site everyday because of this “new” feature.

Tomas.

Just like with me at CYDF / CYQX / CYYT, the problems with tracking departures at MROC begins on the 9th / 10th of March.

If there is some way of going back to the way things were it would be greatly appreciated if it is in fact that easy.

Does anyone know of a good free flight tracker that does what it’s supposed to do?? :laughing:

Give 'em a break, already! They are doing a great job. Whenever software is upgrade, there’s bound to be some bugs.

I, for one, am not a fair weather free flight tracker aficionado. I have confidence that any bugs will be worked out.

In the meantime, if you don’t like it, don’t use it.

Could FA revert to the old system that worked very well a couple months ago? Then put the current system into Beta mode to work out the bugs?