Air Canada uses links to flightstats as an extra service for people like me who want to track flights.
I’m stranded in the Calgary Airport, closed due to blizzard and — possibly — a plane that slid off a runway.
It’s 11:50PM now. The Airport has been CLOSED SINCE 10:30PM.
What does flightstats tell me …
“Delay Index Moderate”
That the flight I await landed 10min late at Calgary. … In reality it was rerouted to Edmonton.
If flightstats is not up-to-date enough to know that an international airport is closed, what good is it?
Air Canada … you Suck too. Drop flightstats.
UPDATE: Scott Hopkins of flightstats sent a rapid and considered response to my complaint. Thanks Scott. … Still, your service didn’t work for me. I spent 4.5hrs in an airport. $30 on parking. My friends stuck in another city overnight when their flight was rerouted. And your site never reported any of that. Last time I checked, your site still told me that the flight had arrived safely, 10min late.
Rick McCharles 
Hi Rick,
We are not affiliated with Air Canada, nor does Air Canada use us any any form. We are an independent company tracking commercial flights around the world. I’m not sure which flight you were referring to but if you would provide with me with the airline code and flight number I would be happy to look into why we were unable to track your flight better.
As for your comment about us showing “moderate delays”, our delay index is not perfect, but is based on actual departure delays that have been occurring. This late at night, the statistical sample is fairly small so we don’t want to be overly pessimistic about our forecasting. In fairness we were showing that delays were occurring and that there was ice present and that delays were increasing. Ideally we would show that the airport was closed, but there’s no central reporting place that airports broadcast this information to so its difficult for us to determine this. I just took a peek at Calgary Airport site and even they don’t show this information.
Sorry that we couldn’t serve you better,
Scott Hopkins
http://www.flightstats.com
Hmmm – someone’s listening!
Your being watched McCharles…. Have to admit that the customer service is quite good….
Drove back from Kinderlsey yesterday and had a car coming from the opposite direction lose control cross our lane and end up flipping in the ditch. The person walked away from the accident, shaken. Very icy.
My 6am flight that’s been cancelled since 3am still shows up as having an on-time departure on flightstats.com (via tripit.com). I’m really glad I decided to get a second opinion from the airline itself (which also failed to proactively alert me to the cancellation) before heading to the airport this morning.
Scott, if you’re still paying attention to this thread, it’s UA2193/US2158.
Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Looks like we missed on that one. I will file a report on it. It may be that the airline just never updated any source on it.
Yes, Flightstats.com suck. My kids are on a plane as you speak that their website say Enroute on time, the problem is, is that they where suppose to land 15 minutes ago, and they haven’t even taken off yet. Grounded due to thunderstorms.
Tags: Sucks terrible wrong