My significant other has been flying alot lately, and I was looking for a way to track her flight status so I would know whether she would be late arriving, or even early (yeah, that doesn’t happen often!).  A quick search on google and I found FlightStats.com.

Flightstats.com is owned by Conducive Technology Corp., a leading provider of worldwide flight status data to the travel and transportation industry.  I assume that’s how they make their money.   But they also provide flight status, flight stats, and flight schedules to the we the common web surfer, free of charge!

The site is laid out simply and has an easy to use interface.  On the main page you get a map of the United States with color coded dots indicating the current real time airport delay index.  This gives me a quick indication of whether I’ll be driving to the airport sooner or later.  Next, on the right side (see photo) you can check any given flights status, searching by flight number, by airport, or by route.  I really like that fact that I can check the flight status by route, as I usually don’t know my spouse’s fight number, but always know the departure and arrival airport and the approximate time of the flight.

When you search by route you get a listing of all the flight schedule for your given date, for the given departure city.  In my example for Miami to St. Kitts, for today, there is only one flight for this route, and stats such as scheduled and actual departure time are listed as well as estimated arrival and actual arrival time.  If you click on the flight number link, a new window pops up giving you all kinds of cool stats on this particular flight.  You also see a google map with the airplanes current position.  Below this map is a link saying “track this flight in real time”.  This is the coolest feature of flightstats.com.  Data includes current flight speed, flight direction, elevation, and a large google map of the flights current position, updated every minute or so.

There is a ton of other free flight status and airport weather updates, along with some desktop widgets for flight status and schedule updates.  I have yet to download any of the flight status widgets and desktop tools, but will review them here on Webchicklet.com as soon as I do.  In the meantime, next time your friends or loved ones are flying somewhere, be sure to give FlightStats.com a try, it’s a fun and super useful free tool!

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