Live Tracking of Commercial and Private Flights in the United States!
By Lark Birdsong
Birdsong Information Services
January, 2009
Overview
I am writing this while at the airport getting ready to fly to the great state of Iowa. In my past I worked at The University of Iowa and have remained close to many people in Iowa. My flight to Iowa reminds me of the website I want to highlight this month as it is a good source of information for travelers and those who are on the grounding wanting to track a flight in progress. Welcome to www.helloflight.com <http://www.helloflight.com/> . It is all about tracking flights in the United States and this interactive website gives us many ways to track both private and commercial flights. Yes there is no more escaping the watchful eye of someone when you are in the sky!
One of the features I like best about Helloflight.com is that it tracks the progress of a flight once it takes off and keeps track of planes scheduled to depart, waiting to ascend into the sky. There are many ways to find flights; by airport code, state, flight number and flight/tail number. Or if you want to spot planes in an area you can do that as well. Click on the tools icon and use the plane spotter to watch flights in an area. As Helloflight.com asks, “Ever wondered what kind of plane that was that just flew overhead? With the plane spotter radius search you can find out.”
Other cool features are a filter to narrow flights at an airport by an airline, see which flights are on delayed status and the ability to track by heliports. I had no idea my little town of 15,000 people had three heliports.
Example
Most of us know of the plane that landed safely on the Hudson River in the first half of January, 2009. Below is an example of what you would have seen had you been watching this flights path. You would have seen the plane’s flight path and landing on the Hudson River before any media coverage on TV. Pretty interesting!
Archive Flight Path for America West Airlines Flight AWE1549
http://www.helloflight.com/archive/AWE1549.cfm
Flight Animation for America West Airlines Flight AWE1549 http://www.helloflight.com/archive/movie/AWE1549/
This website can be a huge time saver. Think about planning to pick up someone at the airport. By tracking their flight once it is in the air you are able to account for any nuances that delay a flight, such as sitting on tarmac, stronger headwinds, diversions in flight, etc.
I am particularly fond of anything that saves me time and have found this website to be useful towards this goal. Welcome to 2009.
Should you need assistance with information
or research please contact me at
or 303-884-8666
