Fastest Way to Check if Flight Has Been Delayed?

[champ.49er]

Last year, I rushed getting back to the airport only to find out that our flight was delayed at least 2 hours. Had I known ahead of time, I would have had less stress and maybe spent another hour at WDW. I have a few iPhone applications that tell me the "flight status", but I'm not sure if it adjusts if the flight has been delayed. Besides calling the airline, what is your fastest way of checking if a flight has been delayed?

PS: I'm flying AirTran this year if that makes a difference. Thanks!

 

[DebbieB]

Rarely are flight delays announced with enough notice that you could stay at WDW longer. You also have to be careful - you are still responsible to be there on time based on the scheduled time. They could find another plane and change the delay time.

 

[JandD Mom]

I agree with Debbie.

However, the absolute best web site I have found to get flight info is flightstats.com. You can register on their site (free) and set up flight alerts and you will get status changes emailed to you or sent to you via text message. The flight alerts are fairly reliable because they are info that the FAA has. But they are not infallible or instant.

HINT: with a little poking around, you can find out what flight is your inbound flight. Once you do that, you can set an alert for the inbound flight too. That will sometimes, BUT NOT ALWAYS, help you find out if your inbound is delayed, and if it will translate in a delay in your flight.

Once I got an alert that my DH's inbound flight was going to be at least 3 hours delayed on SW. So we knew beforehand that the outbound was likely going to be delayed. The outbound delay was not posted until much later, but we were able to get DH changed to another flight.