Is there a way to track a flights path?

[AngiTN]

We have a flight out tomorrow night. There's no bad weather around us or along our route but there is some up north. Is there a way to find out if the flight number we are on comes from an area that may have travel issues? Trying to find out the odds of our flight not making it here.

 

[DVC4US]

I use the app FlightAware - you can put in your flight number and once it brings up your flight there is a tab to click at the top to see where your flight is right now and you can trace the flight back a couple of steps. If the same flight runs today you could try checking it to see what you might have tomorrow. Most flights generally fly the same routes.

I don't know if there is a way to see what your flight will do tomorrow, until tomorrow.

 

[AngiTN]

I use the app FlightAware - you can put in your flight number and once it brings up your flight there is a tab to click at the top to see where your flight is right now and you can trace the flight back a couple of steps. If the same flight runs today you could try checking it to see what you might have tomorrow. Most flights generally fly the same routes.

I don't know if there is a way to see what your flight will do tomorrow, until tomorrow.

The flights we are taking fly daily. I did wonder if they always take the same routes.
I did come across FlightAware and see that the flight we take out of Charlotte comes from DFW today. Will it always come out of DFW or does it's path change?
If it's always coming from DFW I feel better about the flight making it than if it's always coming out of say, New York or something where they are expecting cancellations.
I do realize that I won't know anything for certain, even if the flight isn't in the area that is getting cancellations, mostly just trying to be prepared.

Another odd thing I noticed on FlightAware, the flight we take out of our home airport has no place to click to see where the flight is now, no place to click to track inbound plane. Does that mean it originates here?

 

[JessM]

I second FlightAware, their app is great. You might have to wait until closer to flight time to track your plane. I fly frequently from PWM - BWI (1hour flight). The plane always come in from BWI but sometimes you have to wait until 2 hours out to see "where is my plane now". The flight # always "originates" at PWM. I think maybe it's because a plane hasn't been assigned to route yet? Sometimes I can track it back 3 or 4 legs before it gets to PWM. I would just keep checking.

 

[mb187143]

I second flight aware in general but be mindful - it's not just where the plane is coming from where weather can cause delays. It's also the crew. I fly for work about 3-4 times per month and it happens on occasion that the plane arrives but there is a crew change and they are delayed coming in from another destination. Sometimes it's a negligible delay and at least once in the last 6 months I've had a flight cancelled due to a crew being diverted, a flight delayed in the morning because of delays the previous evening causing a crew rest issue and having to wait on the plane for a crew member who was being called in to replace someone else.

Sometimes knowledge isn't a good thing. You may stress yourself out trying to figure out where the plane is, etc and worrying about weather when in reality, there's nothing that can be done to control the weather. I think I stress out more when I start looking at this stuff so my advice comes from that frame of mind. I also stress more about vacation flights because those are ones I truly want to be on

Good luck, and I hope you are able to get out. I'm in Philadelphia and we are getting a ton of heavy wind so I'm sure flights out of here will also be affected.

 

[AngiTN]

Mostly I want to keep an eye out so we can change to an earlier flight if needed. Though from what I'm seeing the later in the day the lower chance of weather impacting things, it's moving out. But I know there can be a back log too.
I do realize it's out of our control to some degree but do want to stay on top of things to jump on a change if needed. We will have the car packed and be at work and can jump to the airport with little notice. Thankfully we'll be near the airport and fly out of an airport that has no need to arrive more than an hour before a flight.

 

[wilkeliza]

I use Flightaware. You can pretty much track your flight before it is even near getting in the air. So you put in your information and pull up the right date and then just continue to click where is my plane until you get to where that plane currently is.

Most flights paths stay the same but if an airline is expecting bad weather in one place and not another they can try and rework flights. So for example they know they aren't going to be flying out of Dallas tomorrow so any flights that were going to Dallas may be rerouted to unaffected airports with crew in tow so those going form say Chicago to Orlando on what would have been a plane arriving form Dallas to Chicago can still get out. It usually doesn't happen that way though because they wait as long as humanly possible to reroute and cancel flights.

 

[bumbershoot]

Angi, you had mentioned you use Delta a lot, and so I choose a Delta flight from TN (we'll call it #1234). When I go to flightaware and put in that flight number and airline, I end up on a page where I can see future flights, like one tomorrow. I chose one, and the pag it took me to, towards the top, states

"Delta 1234
DAL1234 / DL1234
Scheduled to depart in about 23 hours
Where is my plane now?"

And over to the right:

"Flight Details
Track inbound plane"

 

[AngiTN]

Thanks. I saw that on some flights, just not the one we take tomorrow evening.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

As has been said in earlier posts, there's more to it than the airplane.
Crew, maintenance, departure delays are all very real issues, although not extenemly common.

MG

 

[AngiTN]

I just went and checked it again and our outbound flight does have a path now, it just didn't show one this morning
Looks like it bounces from Gainesville to Charlotte, back to Gainesville and the back and forth from here to Charlotte. We fly out AA tomorrow.
Anyway looks like the planes we take tomorrow stick to the South so hopefully the stuff up north won't be a problem for us.
Since its the last flight out it's a pain if it doesn't fly

 

[KT0191]

Any update on your flight? Hopefully everything is still on time.

 

[cigar95]

One thing that United provides on their site is that on the status for my flight, it includes a link for "where is my plane coming from?" And you can track the status of the particular aircraft that you're scheduled to be on, two or three or more flights back. I've not found that for other carriers - flightview and flightaware track things by flight number, but, as far as I know, they don't tell you about a particular aircraft.
(Caveat - yes, carriers can change aircraft as circumstances change, but the information United provides is a good start.)
I'm also flying tonight, but Delta's coast to coast flights almost never seem to have issues with late aircraft on the Orlando route. Maybe they keep those planes in the southern half of the country so they can avoid weather.

 

[AngiTN]

Any update on your flight? Hopefully everything is still on time.

Yes, everything went perfectly. Just landed, waiting on gate space

Thanks for the info all. Learned a lot about flight info. It's interesting