FlightAware's new tracker for popular airport traffic
FlightAware, a service which provides information about commercial and general aviation air traffic, has a new feature in beta test which allows you to see the most popular carriers which fly between two airports and the typical prices for tickets in that market.
As an example, the site shows that for traffic between Detroit and San Francisco, 42% of flights taken were direct on Northwest Airlines, and the most popular connections to that airport were via Phoenix (US Airways), Minneapolis (Northwest), Las Vegas (US Airways) and Chicago Midway (Southwest). For those direct flights on Northwest, the median price for the year was $228.90; the median flyer on Frontier, which only captured 3 percent of the market with its flights through Denver, paid only $150.06.
FlightAware is also one of the online services that tracks flights to local airports, including live and historical information for Ann Arbor Municipal Airport, Willow Run Airport, and even smaller airfields like Canton-Plymouth-Mettetal Airport in Plymouth. Other services that provide some similar data include AirNav and Skyvector.
Edward Vielmetti collects maps for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.
Comments
Mark Perry
Wed, Mar 3, 2010 : 6:56 a.m.
FlightAware is a great tool for families wanting to know the location of family members, friends and business associates while enroute to ARB, YIP or DTW if you have car shuttle duties. Another value added tool is LiveATC.com, select the departing or arrival airport and listen to communications between the control tower and pilot. If the pilot is a family member or friend, you can monitor their communications with tower controllers. Also, if you are really interested, open both FlightAware and LiveATC in a split screen, you will be able to watch and listen to the plane while enroute. At ARB, LiveATC is made available at no cost to the Ann Arbor community 24/7 by UM Flyers. Interested persons can access ARB tower streaming through LiveATC.com or click on the link at MichiganFlyers.com. Ed, thanks for spotlighting this useful family and friends air travel tracking tool.