FlightCaster goes "live" and helps to predict flight arrival delays
August 20, 2009 -- A new web site has come on-line to help predict flight delays. It is called FlightCaster (flightcaster.com). One simply enters the flight number of the flight that he/she is interested in, and FlightCaster will return results including the likelihood of the flight's arrival being delayed and the probability of how delayed it might be (greater or less than 60 minutes) and the reasons for possible delays including weather and other airport status issues. FlightCaster also reports the estimated arrival and departure times as supplied by FlightStats.com.
At this point, FlightCaster predicts only arrival delays, rather than departure delays, and they discuss this in their FAQ. So while one could use this information for some guidance in predicting departure delays, one will still have to rely on the updates from airlines and airports, or websites such as eXpectdelaYs.com and FlightStats.com (and the estimated arrival and departure times posted on FlightCaster as well) for this information.
FlightCaster certainly should be a useful tool if one wants to anticipitate the flight arrival time of a friend, relative or business associate, or to plan one's own contigency plans in anticipation of a flight arrival delay. It would be great to also have a reliable prediction of departure delays, and the FAQ implies that some information will be provided for this in the future. However, the folks at FlightCaster imply that flight delays may be difficult to predict due to the difficulty in predicting how the airlines will respond to delays. And I think we are all familiar with that ....
