Taking the Sting Out of Flying–the Web Way

One of my favorite movies is Planes, Trains and Automobiles with Steve Martin, where he hilariously wrestles with most of the common annoyances that come up when traveling. If you’re a road warrior in addition to being a web worker, it’s good to collect the sites and services that can make your travels more efficient.

In this post, I’ll focus on a couple of excellent sites that can help ease the hassle of flying, dealing with airports, airport parking and more. Flightstats and FlightAware can save you much grief if you learn how to use them.


FlightStats aggregates a ton of information that travelers can use. It’s both a web site and mobile service you can access on your pocket devices. The site includes a delay index, which tallies up the number of delays going on at any given time, and you can search for status information at any airport.

Flightstats also delivers advisories for travelers, including international advisories. So when a big change comes–such as the recently mandated rules pertaining to laptop batteries on planes–you’ll know sooner rather than later. The real specialty of the site is checking on the status of any given flight, but you can also check the weather by region and much more.

FlightAware
is a huge and informative mashup of information collected in nearly real-time from air traffic control centers. You can find out very accurate information about any flight at the site, and you can look at informative graphics. The site is also good at delivering status information about private flights. In addition, terminal procedures and status information for major airports is easy to pull up and constantly updated.

What sites and services do you recommend for traveling web workers?

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