Don't Back Down

Denise left on a business trip a while ago, and I found myself wondering if there was a way to track her flight online. Surely there had to be something! So as with most things I need to know (but don't), I turned to Google. Interestingly, when I entered flight tracking for my search, the top result was, in fact, Google.

The only problem was that it was the home page, not some special search page that told me what I needed. So acting on a hunch, I entered the airline code and the flight number. Most (all?) airlines have a two-digit identifier, which seemed like a good place to start. If you live in Charlotte, chances are that you'll be wanting us, for USAirways, but that isn't really necessary. There are a couple other airlines that fly here.

Anyway, then I added the flight number, for instance, 123. This one happens to go to Denver, and isn't the one I really needed, but 123 works well for an example. So the results for my query of us 123 netted a whole bunch of stuff, but specifically some links at the top of the results that are typical when Google has special results.

The first went to Travelocity. This is actually a pretty decent link, but the image isn't zoomable and it doesn't update. The second went to Expedia, which didn't return any useful information at all. The final link went to fboweb.com, which offered a cool integration with a Google map, including regular updates, the ability to pan, zoom and everything. Nice! Note that the default fboweb.com tracking system does not use the Google map, but a much less useful version. Use Google to get there.

After looking around a bit more, I also found my way to RLM Software, but their free trial period lasted only a few minutes, and I really didn't like it as much as the fboweb version. I did like the ability to add weather to the map, and being able to see the path of the flight. That was cool. Speaking of weather, why doesn't Google do weather? Being able to overlay that info on a map would be downright cool, especially for this application.

Anyway, some interesting options out there. Let me know if you're aware of any others.