Effects of pax armed with FlightRadar24
In ye olden days, what the dispatcher or gate agent said was the only source of info that pax had on delays or when "their" aircraft would turn up to take pax to their destination
I'm finding that not only is FR24 free and available to everyone, but increasing number of pax have it on their phones and are very ready to use it. Not just avgeeks and spotters, but large numbers of relatively ordinary people. If there's 150 people waiting to fly home from Mallorca, and one person tells a few people "ignore the screens, information shown is b*ll*x, we actually have a 3 hour delay, not just 1 hour", the gossip mill can sometimes spread this info pretty quickly.
Do handling / gate staff dealing with delayed flights regularly get a "I know better than you" response ? Have airports or airlines been forced to improve their delay reporting because FR24 has meant pax now have a (fairly) reliable but independent source of info ?
I know that in very remote areas, FR24 info is less good (or unavailable), but in areas with many flights, population density is usually high and FR24 coverage is good. I know also that some airlines, eg Easyjet, include, or used to, a mini FR24 in their app.
Note... I'm not asking people to rate the quality of FR24 info... but instead asking about how common it is for enough pax on a delayed flight to have FR24 info that this has an effect, and what the effects of this independent info source has on gate staff and other pax-facing airline/airport staff ?
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 4th Jul 2022 at 21:29.