Originally Posted by
Gibon2
What kind of data is driving this thing?
That's the problem, as has been commented on in some outfits/airports there are multitude of sources - you'd hope it wasn't the case but operations may be looking at one system (which you'd hope was accurate, but more of that later) customer service another source that might be out of date.
The comments about FR24 is spot on, if you can work out the aircraft rotation... for example:
A certain captain waiting to operate a flight out of a much loved London airport during a major snow event a handful of winters ago, needless to say all is not going well and systems are creaking as ETAs are somewhat fluid. Crew have (stupidly, should have known better etc,) gone airside early and are now in loiter/coffee shop mode.
Ops phone captain on his mobile:
" captain, could you round your team up and get the crew to gate xx, ASAP, we show the flight arriving in 5 minutes and we need a quick turn".
Captain: " that's impressive, at the moment according to Flightradar the aircraft is holding over Brecon......."
Ops :"Errr.... we'll ring you back"