New request: retro flight finder

The flight finder is not working. What was wrong with the old one.

I was searching for a UPS flight OMA-OAK.
I cleared the Alliance check boxes. NOTHING showed up. Then I realized that you need to have none or one of the alliances checked. Logically speaking, if you clear the “none” boxes you should still get the operators that are not a member of an alliance.

If you insist on keeping this flight finder then how about a couple of things to make more efficient to use

  • have a box to allow showing of only nonstop flights
  • What’s the purpose of having connecting flights without full details? There should be a arrival/departure time shown at the connecting airport(s). The way it is now you have to look up the first flight then go back and select the next flight.

The “problem” with the old flight finder was users weren’t finding flights. The new one has shown dramatically better results for getting users to the flights they want.

The first one on flightaware.com/live/findflight/oma/oak with all default options?

If you clear the “None” alliance box, you’re hiding airlines that aren’t a member of an alliance. It wouldn’t make sense to work any other way, since you’d never be able to hide un-aligned flights.

Nonstop flights always appear at the top of the page, ahead of any one stop trip options.

With all the times in it becomes a more confusing eye chart for the one stop flights. To avoid that we show the trip departure and arrival times rather than individual flights times, as well as the connection time.

I’ve never understood the reason for showing connecting flights.

To me, it makes more sense to have the alliances listed. If they are unchecked then it includes ALL airlines, those with and without an alliance.

Is it least possible to make the page easier to read? (more space or thicker line between flights - some of us are getting older) Maybe make the flight ID bold for the first flight:

nonstop:
UPS578

1 connection:
UPS111
UPS222

2 connections:
UPS111
UPS222
UPS333
I found the non-intuitive way of eliminating connections: slide the connection time slider all the way to the left.

I was always able to find flights with the old system. Are you talking about people who wanted to find a flight for Auntie Mae from NYC to SBA and couldn’t find the flight because it is a connecting flight?

FlightAware is an above average site for tracking flights. Why is it trying to become a one-stop site for ANYTHING dealing with flights? Why are resources are used on showing average fares which don’t really mean anything? Why show connecting flights so I can find out when Auntie Mae is arriving? If you are going to have connecting flights then you should actually sho multiple stop GA flights also in case Auntie Mae is flying her Cessna 152 across the country.

Errr, you must have never flown GA to say the above.

IFR flight plans don’t go into the system before 1 hour (may be 2?) before proposed departure. I fly a 3 hour leg, how will Flight Aware accommodate your request before it hits the FAA system?

Going on memory from what others have told me, my second leg will show up as scheduled when flight plan does hit Flight Aware when I am in the air. Third leg, same drill, only 1 or 2 hours before proposed departure it will show up.

Bottom line, I can file a full day’s worth of flight plans. FA won’t only show but closed segments of time within the FAA parameters.

Because people include connections in their travel plans and don’t always convey that to those meeting them at the airport.

We list the relevant alliances for each page - no sense in listing SkyTeam if there aren’t any SkyTeam results on the page. Unchecking any alliance removes their results from the page; it wouldn’t make sense to display all results when all alliances (including None) are unchecked.

The results are zebra striped with a bold blue line between each trip result.

The nonstop options are always at the top of the page; you’ll never have a nonstop option buried among the one stop options.

Yes. Auntie says she’ll arrive at 9 . Flight finder shows nonstops arriving at 7 and 11, but a one stop arriving at 9. I had that situation happen last week picking a friend up from the airport.

We’d like and we plan to, the implementation ends up being more difficult than airlines and we haven’t worked out a performant way to do it yet.

Mark,

Don’t you already have this in place when a user files using FA flight planner.

I was thinking in the past I asked such a question and somebody said all filed flights through FA would show as scheduled on the tail number.

Of course this behavior won’t be seen when filing with other sources.

Or am I out to lunch on the question all together?

Errr, that was reductio ad absurdum

Out of curiosity, I decided to check on a flight that some people I am picking up are one. The flight is ASA2609 from EUG to OAK via PDX (not a connecting flight but a direct flight).

I entered ASA2609 into the flight/tail# box. The only segment that showed up was PDX-OAK. So I entered QXE (the actual operator)2609. Same thing - PDX-OAK.

I entered EUG and OAK as origin and destination in the “forgot flight number?” box. I found the flight - QXE609 but it was shown as a connecting flight. (I can understand this because for operational purposes it is a connecting flight that just happens to use the same aircraft for both segments.)

Shouldn’t this have shown as ASA2609 from EUG to PDX to OAK rather than just PDX-OAK? What if someone else was looking for this flight and didn’t know that it was a flight that made a stop in PDX? He just knew his friends were coming in from EUG. How can he find out the arrival time for his friends’ flight?

That’s a separate problem we’re working on, where regionals sometimes drop leading digits (or change them). It’s difficult to automatically correlate based on scheduled time in the case of IRROPS.

How about showing actual wheels up times once the flight is enroute or arrived?
American 1264 SAN-DFW is one of the first flights out after the curfew lifts (06:30), but it always shows up on on the flight finder with the original gate times, no matter what the flight did. Today, they had a problem with the aircraft and it finally departed at 14:09.
flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL1 … /KSAN/KDFW
But when I look at the flight finder, it shows the departure (06:20) and arrival (11:25) gate times as if nothing ever happened.
This is just one example. I believe all flights are shown on the finder with scheduled times, which is fine before the flight is in the air. But it can be rather misleading after the flight has landed, especially if there’s been a lengthy delay like the one mentioned above.

We’ve found scheduled times to be most useful, but we plan to offer an option to show estimated/actual times instead.