KLM Flying Dutchman - KLM flight tracking is fake???

On 13 - 2 in Bucharest, Romania, I was wondering if the KL1374 had left at 14:00. There were a lot of snow problems.


The airport said "NO", or at least "not yet":

http://i44.tinypic.com/2nsxuvq.png


But KLM said it was in the air and specified clearly where it was and how long the flight would take:


http://i41.tinypic.com/3089zra.png


Flightstats said :"We do not know, we have no information the plane has taken off.":

And later on KLM said: Anulated!

http://i42.tinypic.com/25rgj8g.png


The day after I spoke with the crew: The plane never left; it had technical problems. You could see the plane covered with a lot of snow.

Does this mean that those little planes on the map, who suggest you that the information comes right from the cockpit, are fake?

Brrrrrrr...

Huib

Welcome to FlyerTalk, herpi! :) Since your query is specific to a specific airline, we'll shift your thread over to the KLM forum for further discussion. Thanks! /JY1024, TravelBuzz co-moderator

Well its not fake in the way of "made up". Probably what they do is:

When the airport has closed the gate, it calculates how much time has passed since gate closed and now (current time). With that it can calculate where the plane should be. That's what it shows on the map.

If however a flight has a technical issue and does not depart, that will not be reflected in the flight path until the flight actually gets cancelled. When that happens the system will realize it never left and remove the plane from the map.

So it is based on somewhat actual data, but it does not have access to the actual location / positioning data of flights. If you want that you should check something like flightradar24.com. They use the beacons on the planes to determine their location.

[edit]
Actually on the screenshots posted above it says that the actual flight path may differ from what is shown. That indicates that they use a "best guess" approach, and not live tracking data.

Still somewhat dissappointing. I expected the locaiton of the plane on the map directly from the cockpit.

Anyway. Thx for your explanation about "Gate closed"

Huib