All right, you night owl aviation geeks, here's a question for you.
I'm monitoring two in-air flights for clients (parent and adult kids) on their way to meet up at FCO. Both are late.
AA 240 left an hour and a half late. AA shows it arriving about two hours late.
But FlightAware shows it arriving five hours late. Not only that--it shows a wackadoodle flight path going all the way to Germany before heading south. I thought, hmm, did I miss a French air traffic control strike announcement (because it totally avoids France)? Is it going around some massive storm?
But then I checked the other flight--DL 206--and it has a normal-looking flight path, right over France.
And European radar looks pretty calm, so I don't think it's bad weather.
Maybe the only landing window they could get with the delayed departure requires killing a lot of time?
Or is the AA app right and FlightAware wrong?
I'm working on adapting things at the other end for their late arrival, but just for my own entertainment and curiosity, what might be the reason for this crazy path? And what might account for the three-hour difference in expected landing times between these two sources (as of 10:30 Thursday night, CDT)?



AA's version

FlightAware's version