Flight status: who to believe?
Feb 2, 2019, 4:06 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 415
Flight status: who to believe?
My wife is on CX829 heading to HKG from YYZ tonight. Checking CX website and HKG airport website, the flight will land just 6 minutes late. However, checking Google and FlightAware the flight will land 2 hours and 35 minutes late. That's a big discrepancy! It is important to me because I am in HKG and we are continuing onwards to Singapore together on a separate ticket on another airline. If CX829 is really 2.5 hours late, she will miss the flight. Who do I believe: Google and FlightAware? Or CX and HKG?
Feb 2, 2019, 4:36 am
#3
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Hong Kong
Programs: CX, UA, Shangri-La, Hyatt, Starwood
Posts: 7,708
Haha why on Earth would you believe Google here? They are not god after all. (And I'm pretty sure they get their data from flight aware, so your two discrepancies are really just one mistake not two).
Anyway, you can see the flight went airborne at 2:10am from the various aviation websites. Scheduled departure time of 1:20am would have an airborne time ex-YYZ factored in of about 1:40am. Hence, it took off approx 30 minutes behind. (Not 50 minutes)
But there is generally some buffer built into the schedule too. My bet is it arrives max 40 minutes late, and likely will make up time to land closer to, or perhaps right in time.
But obviously 2.5 hours is wrong mate
. You can just use your noggin to think "if the plane took off 30 minutes late, why would it suddenly become 2.5 hours delayed...". Those dumb apps and predictions are just wrong a lot. You can see the plane airborne on FR24 approaching the N. America side of Greenland right now with nothing weird going on. Totally normal flight path.
Anyway, you can see the flight went airborne at 2:10am from the various aviation websites. Scheduled departure time of 1:20am would have an airborne time ex-YYZ factored in of about 1:40am. Hence, it took off approx 30 minutes behind. (Not 50 minutes)
But there is generally some buffer built into the schedule too. My bet is it arrives max 40 minutes late, and likely will make up time to land closer to, or perhaps right in time.
But obviously 2.5 hours is wrong mate
. You can just use your noggin to think "if the plane took off 30 minutes late, why would it suddenly become 2.5 hours delayed...". Those dumb apps and predictions are just wrong a lot. You can see the plane airborne on FR24 approaching the N. America side of Greenland right now with nothing weird going on. Totally normal flight path.
Feb 2, 2019, 8:32 am
#4
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: HKG
Programs: CX DM, SPG Pt, Le Club Accor GO, Shangri-La GC Jade
Posts: 1,327
Interesting... Just checked CX829... Both Google and Bing returns 2.5 hours late... BUT data was from flightstats and updated 5 hours ago (as at this moment)....
Checking flightstats, the most updated data from them is also 31 minutes late.... BUT once you clicked into the data page you can see the old data and flight track is different from the expected flight track in flightstats database.... CX829 is flying the north pole route rather than across Europe... That could explain the difference as their system is estimating the time needed (18+ hours) based on their "expected" route not actual route
Checking flightstats, the most updated data from them is also 31 minutes late.... BUT once you clicked into the data page you can see the old data and flight track is different from the expected flight track in flightstats database.... CX829 is flying the north pole route rather than across Europe... That could explain the difference as their system is estimating the time needed (18+ hours) based on their "expected" route not actual route