Originally Posted by
PIONEER
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?
Hi there,
regarding the delays:
Most user (85%) use the calculated datas the system generates, which of course does not include anything else than the scheduled time...
While we all know about the existance of the Jet Streams it is really not so easy to find an algorithm, that reflects it in all cases - e.g. it is not the same all year and the effect also may vary due to certain weather conditions.
So instead of opening the box of the pandora we decided to stay with our scheduled calculations until we have more ressources (which being just the two of us after 5 years, I am starting to doubt) and a way to calculate it...maybe the easiest way (for us) would be to start flagging scheduled (calculated by FM) durations in order to distinguish the actual or entered durations...
The overall average duration should be higher than that of an US user - please do not forget, we did start in Germany and Europe with our idea/site and most Europeans and Germans actually fly rather medium or long distances in comparison to the average US citizen.
Also we do have the issue of pure poster-hunters, who just enter their long haul flights in order to get their poster...and as they are not "cockpit" or "virtual" we cannot filter them out easily. This will be better in 2011 we hope, as we have just finished a mechanism that will deactivate all old accounts in terms of the stats and flights...but it will be summer until it really kicks in and even then I still think the overall average will still be above the US average in terms of duration...
Happy logging and Thanks for bearing with us all this time - we do appreciate it!
sam