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Save/ShareNothing's a sure thing at an airport, except for exasperation. I recently discovered something new to be exasperated about. It turns out that the electronic boards in airport terminals, which announce flight arrivals and departures, can sometimes be misleading.
My friend and I were recently departing from the Louisville airport. Our flight was canceled. But we wouldn't have known this fact if we had relied on the terminal's electronic boards, which wrongly said our flight was departing on time.
Luckily, I found out about the flight cancellations via an alert to my cell phone. I had signed up for the alert when buying my ticket. And I had bought my ticket via Orbitz, after finding the fare through a Kayak search. As Orbitz promised, an alert by voice mail to my cell phone warned me that our flight was canceled.
It wasn't just Louisville's terminal electronic boards that were misleading during my trip. The electronic boards at New York's LaGuardia airport also displayed wrong information, this time affecting my second flight of the evening. This flight was an onward connection out of Charlotte. The plane--like many planes this summer--was grounded on the tarmac for a couple of hours. Yet when the passengers sitting near me called their families at LaGuardia to report the delays, the families told them that the airport arrivals board was saying the flight was "on-time"--a physical impossibility....
Had my fellow passengers called their family members earlier, they might have been able to warn them that the flight was delayed and spared them a three-hour wait at the airport to greet them.
So, again, be sure to sign up for those flight alerts to your cell phone, which can be sent by text- or recorded-voice message.
If you buy tickets through Orbitz.com, they'll give you an option to sign up for these alerts.
Some, but not all, other airline websites also offer this option. United, American, Delta, Northwest, and Continental are some of the airlines that enable passengers to sign up to receive notifications at their websites.
Some websites, such as Orbitz, allow you to sign other people up to receive fare alerts to. In other words, you could add family members to the list of people receiving the alerts.
One catch, though: If you're departing for a red-eye morning departure, the alert may wake you at an inopportune time to merely report that your flight is on time. In such a case, you'll be annoyed. Orbitz allows you to block out particular times--such as early mornings--when you do not want to receive messages. I hope other travel websites will adopt the same feature.
In fact, I hope they go one better. Airlines and companies such as Orbitz should begin to offer text messages that contain connecting gate information for multiple-stop flights. Here's what I mean: Say you have a to connect to another plane at an airport to catch an onward flight. Most flight attendants fail to announce the relevant gate information. You're expected instead to "deplane" and then stand around an electronic board in a terminal looking for the relevant gate information, wasting precious minutes to meet tight connections. Why can't companies like Orbitz, and airline websites, send text messages with the relevant gate information? There must be a solution.
Related: Readers offer 7 tips for coping with delays and cancellations.
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I just wanted to warn others after my daughter booked a ticket on a major airline carrier, through a travel agent she was unable to leave on the date the ticket was issued and lost the entire ticket. This turned out to be a consolidator ticket and there were no other dates available. Before you jump at a cheap fare check out the conditions. The maajor airline could not help us as they had no fare code and the consolidator didn't want to bother.
Posted By janet ko on August 14, 2007, 8:33 PM
I'm a corporate travel agent and successfully use www.flightstats.com for accurate flight alerts for my clients. Flightstats will also give you gate and baggage claim information.
Posted By Alexander Irmler on August 16, 2007, 2:19 AM
Ok, so where do you sign up? I don't see it on the form.
Please advise ASAP.
Thanks,
Joe
Posted By Joe D Hampton Jr on August 16, 2007, 8:23 AM
When I booked a recent trip through Orbitz my husband (who spends 10 times more on line than I do) suggested that I use his e-mail address and cell phone to receive travel change alerts from Orbitz. My return trip on two carriers was first delayed by weather. The second delay in Newark was nearly 3 hours. When I called my husband to advise him about the delayed flight he was way ahead of me - Orbitz called his cell many times to keep him apprised of my flight's status. This worked great for us.
Posted By Mina Healy on August 16, 2007, 4:06 PM
Does Alaskan Airlines have this service?
Posted By Peggy Paul on August 16, 2007, 4:42 PM
Hi, Peggy Paul,
Thanks for your email. Yes, Alaska Air does.
You can sign up here:
http://www.alaskaair.com/dayofflight/alerts.aspx
Regards,
Sean
Blog editor
Posted By Sean O'Neill on August 16, 2007, 4:44 PM
This is great!!!!
Posted By Mary cutler on August 16, 2007, 8:55 PM
It is true that the electronic boards at airports can be misleading, and unfortunately it happens when you need them most--when things begin to go wrong, such as delays and cancelations. The boards are controlled by employees of the airlines, and when they get busy with the extra paperwork of a cancelation or delay, changing the board may not get done. It is always best to talk to an agent.
As for the connecting gate information, even if the flight attendant gives it (which I personally find annoying to listen to that list on the plane), you still need to check the monitors or speak with an agent because that connection list was given to the flight attendant by the gate agent at departure. Gate information can and does change quite often before your plane arrives at its destination.
Posted By Colleen on August 16, 2007, 11:01 PM
in the article about flight alerts it later said other family members could sign up for FARE alerts?? is this a typo or are there cell phone FARE alerts as well?? thanks
Posted By ellen on August 18, 2007, 5:57 PM
Nope, Ellen,
You're right.
It was a typo.
No fare alerts to your cell phone.
My regrets!
--Sean
Posted By Sean O'Neill on August 18, 2007, 8:12 PM
With all of the growing ways of getting flight information (on-site boards, gate marquis, tms, voice mails, the Weather Channel, airline/airport Web sites), I am constantly worried that I am trusting the wrong source for flight status. The airport boards are not correct. I have also been chastised by an agent telling me that I cannot go by the internet status reports. What can I trust? It is just not feasible for everyone to always verify all information with a live human being. It is logistically impossible and it defeats the purpose of all of these other technological (and expensive) means of communicating real-time information. How can we, as the consumer, discern which of these means of info are up-to-date and official? Any ideas?
Thanks, April M
Posted By april on August 19, 2007, 11:42 PM
pretty nice site and service thanks a bunch
Posted By mike hunt on May 9, 2008, 3:54 AM