We’ve all been there…
- You’re stuck at the airport and your flight has been delayed…and delayed again…and now cancelled.
- Or we’ve watched the meltdown of Southwest or Delta or whichever airline, or at EWR or ORD or whichever airport, due to weather, air traffic control, and/or whatever other unfortunate factors.
Of course, if people have the “right” apps (these are some excellent ones) and enough experience with traveling, they can figure out why those delays and/or cancellations are happening. But sometimes there’s more to the story than just what FlightRadar24 or whatever app can tell you.
Sometimes you just want a quick look at the whole picture because it will explain everything all at once. And that’s where one particular page of FlightAware comes in.
Obviously, some of you reading this are WELL aware of FlightAware. For those who are not quite as much of aviation geeks, FlightAware is the world’s largest flight tracking platform. From FlightAware’s “About” page: “With global connectivity to every segment of aviation, FlightAware provides over 10,000 aircraft operators and service providers as well as over 13,000,000 passengers with global flight tracking solutions, predictive technology, analytics, and decision-making tools.”
If you look at FlightAware’s front page, scroll down a bit and click on the ‘TRACK NOW’ option, you can see what’s going on, around the world, in terms of flights. To be honest, that can be pretty overwhelming when you’re talking about 10,000+ flights at any given moment.
And frankly, it still won’t help you know why your flight is so delayed.
But…hidden in the depths of FlightAware is a page that explains it all. And the title of it is….well, it’s just perfect.
Misery Map
I have to admit – although FlightAware’s Misery Map is new to ME, it’s not new at all. In fact, it’s been around since at least November, 2013 (and potentially even earlier; Nov. ’13 just the earliest reference I could find of it).
But the Misery Map is cool because it’s an interactive map that shows how things are going at 17 major transportation hubs across the U.S. (30 airports in total). In real time, it tells you how many flights were recently canceled or delayed (highlighted in red) and how many are proceeding as scheduled (highlighted in green).
You can also click on each hub to see how the airports in that hub are doing. In the case below, if you click on NYC, you can discover that of the 92 delayed flights in the NYC area, 38 of them are at LGA, 29 are at JFK, and 25 are at EWR.
I also like that they superimpose weather onto the map, which makes it easy to see that, for example, DEN’s delays might be because of the adverse weather going through the area.
FA’s Misery Map also allows you to see the pattern of delays that have happened throughout the country, up to the previous 48 hours. You just move your cursor to where you want it to start, click the blue arrow, and you’ll see a short video of what’s happened at the hubs.
Misery Map isn’t anything earth-shattering, I know. But if you’re stuck at an airport, you might feel a little bit better knowing that others all across the country are in the same predicament as you, and sharing your misery. And there’s something to be said about that, y’know?
Feature Image: Brunosan / flickr / CC BY 2.0
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