Originally Posted by
ssb2045
Just curious to see how you guys track time of flights with regard to delays. For example, I was on a DL Shuttle flight last night that was scheduled to depart 7pm, delayed to 8pm (arr. 935pm), then pushed back and held on the Tarmac for an hour and a half, then finally arrived in Chicago at 1040. I usually just put the scheduled times down, since I rarely remember the exact time a flight actually takes off or lands. How about you?
That is an interesting question. I've just let FM calculate duration for 99% of my flights. I assume that that is just the in air time, as often the scheduled gate to gate time is an hour longer, and then you have delays on top of that. FM also does not appear to adjust for the impact of the jet stream, i.e. all else being equal, an East to West flight will take longer than a West to East flight.
I just looked at the "compare" data you get with a premium FM membership. My average duration per (mostly domestic) flight is 1.713 hours, but the average for all members is 3.096. Of course, that could be not only because of more longer flights, or it could also be because a lot of people are inputting scheduled or actual times. If I had done so, I'm sure my average would be over 2 hours.
I guess it all depends on how you define "duration". Maybe somebody from FM could tell us how often people input flight times?