Hi All,
For a while now I have been helping out my friends and family with their flights, or more accurately, predicting their flight delays. Here’s how I do it, just keep in mind I normally do this roughly 6-8 hours before the flight’s scheduled boarding time.
- I go to the FlightRadar24 app and search up the flight number. I find the right one, and then look at as much history as it will allow me (I’m on the free plan). If I can see that it’s regularly delayed, I find the median delay and write it down.
- I then go into the flight that my friend/relative is going on and find the registration, and write that down too.
- I go to www.regosearch.com, where I look up the registration of the aircraft and write down some basic details (age, operator commencement date etc.)
- I go to flightaware.com and put the rego in the search bar, but you have to be careful here, do not hit enter! You’ll get something along these lines;
Make sure you click on the one that has the rego only, not the flight. Especially with 737s, they can be very busy and often have live flights when you search them up. - Take a screenshot of the flight history and copy the FPL into notes if you want to do the flight in IF later.
- Have a look at the rest of the flights of that aircraft for the day. If one (or more) of them has been delayed, write that down.
- Go to windy.com and have a look at the winds. If there looks to be a tailwind or headwind, write that down too.
- Last of all, put together a nice looking document with all the information you found, including a final departure/arrival delay estimate. Upload it to a cloud storage platform, or if you have a website like me, to your website, and send a link to your friend/family member, I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. This is one I did for my step mum when she did YSSY-YMML a few weeks ago.
Happy Landings
– Velocity23