Track a plane flight on the Web

Can I track a plane flight on the Web?

I always get the airport early, even when my children's flights end up being late. Makes me crazy, but I hate calling up the airline status update computer because I hate talking to automated systems like that. Blech! Is there some way I can check flight status online?

---

Dave's Answer:

The phone-based flight status system? I haven't used one of those for eons, I didn't realize they were still an option!

Fortunately, my sister's flying in to meet me in Southern California the day I got your query, so it'll let me demonstrate some of the many super cool ways you can track a flight online nowadays, without ever leaving the comfort of your home!

The easiest - and this might surprise you - is that you can just do a Google search for the flight. Enter airline and flight number, and it'll show you that flight's status.

For example, my sister is on Alaska Airlines flight 582, so that's what I type into Google:

Looks good. Looks like she's on time and scheduled to land in about 45 minutes, 7 minutes early. Which reminds me, I need to go pick her up!

If I finish this blog entry up first, however, :-) I'll instead click on the link shown and get a bit more information, from the site "flightstats.com":

Very cool. Even cooler, though, is what the site flightaware.com can show, because it can place the plane over a map. Look for it as one of the other top matches for your airline flight update search on Google, click on it, and:

Even better, there are all sorts of other stats that the site can display about a particular plane flight:

And just for completeness sake, I went to Alaska Airlines and clicked on "Check Flight Status", just to be presented with this information:

Still, it's hard to beat just typing in the airline and flight number into Google!

In any case, gotta go, hope this is helpful!

Can I track a plane flight on the Web? :: Free Tech Support :: Ask Dave Taylor!®