Sunday, March 20, 2011

Track flights in the air


Tracking arrivals and departures of airplanes is easy and quick to do. Flight tracking was started  in the 21st century when several institutions had subsidized websites and software development to address the need of airline companies and passengers to track whereabouts of aircrafts. If you are one of those individuals who want to track flights in the air, just follow these steps.

Before anything, make sure you have the following information ready: flight destination, airline name and flight number.

In U.S.A., you have a way of checking for flight delay information. The Air Traffic Control System Command Center can provide you with general airport conditions, but not about flights. It helps provide information if your flight is affected.

You may contact the airline and ask for assistance on the status of the flight you want to know. Most likely, the airline can give you the most possible location of the aircraft and the ETA or the expected time of arrival. Sometimes, airline hotlines are too busy and difficult for you to get through. Another option available is to check online flight trackers.

When you google search for “flight tracker international,” it gives about a million results, but not necessarily the same number of online flight trackers. Some people who have been using web that track flights in the air have their favorite sites.  If you are yet new to this service, check sites and choose which you feel is most convenient to use.

Once you have chosen the site, enter the information such as flight destination, flight arrival (some sites ask for this), the airline company and the flight number.

The following are known sites that air travelers may use.
Flightview is an application, also available for mobile devices, that easily tracks real-time information and graphic view of a flight’s progress and number of airlines being delayed at a certain airport.
FlightAware.com website gives travel users flight tracking and airport activities.
Flights.com gives status of your flight delays, cancellations, and remaining time for flights that just departed.
Another world-wide coverage is Aeroseek.com. It tracks airlines and private aircrafts, airport arrivals and departures, airport weather and security wait times.
Google too has flight tracking service, the gmapsflighttracker.com. It provides inbound flights in selected airports in America.

There are a lot more sites to choose from. We should be grateful to these companies that pioneered the development of this application that enables us to track flights in the air.