How to determine inbound flight
 

Hey folks,

I just saw that my SFO-EWR flight (#1829) tonight is delayed by over two hours due to a delay with the inbound aircraft. How, if at all, is it possible to determine the flight number of the inbound flight? I'd like to track it.

On a side note, am I still expected to arrive at the airport on time? I'd rather not waste two hours when I could be at home. Is there a way to know for sure if the flight has no chance of being moved up?

Thanks, as always, for your help...

Yonajon

A. do a search.
b. think about the hubs.
c. Think about the plane size.

Not foolproof to say the least but it might get you somewhere.

It looks like it is operating as flight #348 to SFO.

Bummer. Strange, too. That flight left the gate 1 hour late, but is arriving 131 minutes late. They lost 71 minutes in the air?

:confused: It hasn't left the ground yet.

My husband is on this flight. It pulled back an hour late, but as of right now, is still on the ground.

Rant alert: He's a plat, H fare, no upgrade, full flight. No drinks.

Typical EWR Sunday evening flight. With all the Intl flights leaving, a 90 - 120 minute taxi is not uncommon. I've had the opportunity to sit through many of them.

Yeah, now my flight is 3 hours delayed.

I called CO and the rep spoke with his supervisor about putting me on a Delta flight that is not delayed. The supervisor refused to make the switch, claiming that the delay is due to weather. The rep told me my best bet is to go to the airport on time and to try to convince Delta to honor my CO ticket and let me fly with them free. Anyone ever heard of such a thing?

The CO website says the delay is ATC.

NWA is known to do this, though I forget the term they use for it. You can ask, and Delta can honor it if they want, but don't hold your breath.

And it looks like the weather issue is at SFO, not EWR, so the DL flight might not actually be on time, though if the airplane is there already it has a better chance.

Its called the "BUMP" program, theres a long thread about it on the NWA forum. I tried reading through it once, but it got kinda confusing/boring...although the OP would probably have a better interest in it than I would

Thanks for the information on BUMP. Now that 348 is in the air, I'm hoping that our departure time of 1:26am will be final. Though it's screwing up my morning schedule in New York, I think I'll just live with it, rather than waste three hours at the airport trying to convince Delta to fly me to JFK.

Here's an interesting question: before the delay, I checked seatavailability.com for A class availability (hoping for a rare EUA). There was nothing (as expected). Now there are two open seats in A. Does this increase my chance for upgrade? I'm Plat, but in a low fare class with seq # 18.

To answer the original question, you can usually use www.flightstats.com - first look at "arrivals" under the airport page, filtered by CO - it shows the gate that each inbound aircraft is scheduled to arrive at. From that, you'll find the inbound flight number, which you can then click on to track.

At hubs there is a chance of this method failing, as CO (or any other airline) has more of an ability to swap out an aircraft at short notice, but the vast majority of the time it works for me.

Unfortunately it doesn't make you any less delayed :)

Wow, I am so confused. Just got a text message from Continental saying that our flight is now back to 11:03pm. Throughout the last few hours, it moved from 10:25pm to 11:27pm to 12:31am to 1:16am to 1:26am and now back to 11:03pm.

Does this mean that they probably changed the aircraft? Any way to know? I know it doesn't really matter, but I love to understand this stuff.

Yes, switched.

Now, they're using the plane coming as CO41 for your flight. Est arrival at Gate 32A 10:18p.