Today’s post deals with airfare and airports and is more of a beginner-style post for the casual traveler. Many of you who are more frequent travelers probably already know this, so you can go ahead and just click away before you yell at me for writing a “clickbait” headline with “obvious” advice 🙂
If you travel with any deal of frequency, you are probably familiar with the situation of showing up to the airport several hours early, only to find out that your flight is going to be delayed.
[Help! I’m wasting DAYS of my life in airports!]
Now if you have any of the premium credit cards that give Priority Pass or any other airport lounge access, the pain is ameliorated a bit since you typically have access to more comfortable seating, free / better wi-fi, and snacks and drinks.
The #1 trick to tell if your flight is going to be delayed
The #1 trick I use to tell if my flight is going to be delayed is checking where your inbound aircraft is. I use Flightaware.com for this (not an affiliate link). Just pull up your flight, and click on the “Where is my aircraft now” link at the top. Here’s an example of the current flight I am waiting for (in The Club CVG)
My flight is scheduled to board at 9:50 and depart at 10:20. Yet, as I sit here at 9:38 a.m. at the time of this writing, I can click on the “Where is my plane now?” link, which tells me
My plane left Baltimore on time but is scheduled to arrive in CVG 25 minutes late, at 10:10 a.m. So if that plane arrives at 10:10, there is no way they’re going to be boarding it for MY flight at 9:50!
How to see past airline trickery
The part that irritates me the most is that most airlines do not actually put any delay notice up until well past the time that it is obvious to just about everyone that the flight is going to be delayed. Put another way, airlines seem to cling to the belief that just possibly, everything will go right, time will stand still, and they still might put this flight out ontime until the absolute last possible second.
Here’s an example from a recent flight I had on Frontier from Denver to Cincinnati. The flight was scheduled to leave at 9:35a.m. and here’s a picture that I took of the boarding area at 9:24 a.m.
Note that this is 11 minutes before the flight is scheduled to depart and not only have they not started boarding, THE INCOMING AIRCRAFT IS NOT EVEN HERE!?!?!? There is ZERO chance that this flight is departing at 9:35, yet Frontier still clings to the this fallacy, misleading passengers
Finally, at 9:33 a.m. (2 minutes before the scheduled departure), they update the sign
For the record, it ended up departing at 10:11 a.m.
I hope this trick will help you but make sure to double check with the airport / gate / other source – I’d hate to rely 100% on this advice and find that they’ve swapped out aircrafts or in some other way rearranged the schedule to have you miss your flight
Readers – have you noticed that airlines don’t like to update their posted times? Have you used the “where is my plane now?” trick?
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
It’s so very frustrating, but this is a trick I use frequently.
Interestingly enough, while Southwest is guilty of what you described above, sometimes the opposite is true: the delay something quite a bit and then bump the time back closer to the original departure.
Of course, less of a delay is better, but I never rely on a SW delay as an excuse to get to the airport later because I have seen them “undelay” so many times.
Ibuse flightaware for this as well. The airlines never keep up with these delays.
The danger with this is. Say you have a 9am flight on AA at DFW and you see at 8am that the inbound hasnt left MIA yet. So you think there will be a delay amd you can’t rely on AA to tell the truth. So you take your time getting to the airport only to find that they did an aircraft swap to get the plane out close to on time.
AA has an incoming flight link in their app, which is quite convenient.
I guess the frustrating part of delays is not actually being told the truth. I could live with being told the truth is team of outright lies.
That’s basically how I feel too
On United’s app, the Flight Status has an option, “Where is this flight coming from?” So check your flight’s status, click that question , and you can see if the incoming aircraft will arrive in time for your own on-time departure. With the fullness of planes lately, it takes AT LEAST 30 minutes for the plane to empty, for servicing the aircraft and boarding for the next flight. I figure 45 to 60. Any airline’s gate display that boarding alone for a full 737 (let alone a full widebody 777) can be done in 15 minutes or less is a joke.
I agree with Chuck — I use the app all of the time to check not only the incoming flight, but also the flight before that and the flight before that… Before I leave for the airport, I check the previous flights, how much layover time they have, etc., because it might make more sense to switch to a different flight before I head to the airport, and if that flight is earlier or later than my original flight, then I can adjust my daily schedule accordingly.
Using flightaware.com can hardly be described as a trick. I have seen aircraft swaps too often to rely on the incoming flight being late to guarantee that the outgoing flight will be late. Most times you are going to be in the airport anyway so what do you gain by checking flightaware? If you are in a lounge, just relax and take another liquor to calm down!
I would never not arrive to the airport based on this info but it’s definitely useful to learn about a potential delay before it actually gets posted on your flight. And if you’re at a smaller airport, there’s likely no airplane swap coming.
I fly a LOT but won’t browbeat the columnist, the writing is clear and grammatically correct and honest. I just want to mention one pretty obvious things you May have overlooked and one perhaps more subtle way to gain information about when you might actually reach your destination.
You can ask the airline agents at the airport where the incoming flight is. If delayed you can then ask if the plane is in the air yet and if not what the hold up is. Believe it or not the outside baggage attendants often seem to know more than the agents inside. If you are polite, the airline people will often give you more information than you can get on line.
The more subtle way to judge your likelihood of being on time is to observe your surroundings. If the airport is mobbed and many other flights are delayed, chances are good that yours will be too. You can check weather in other parts of the country. Everything is so tightly connected these days that bad weather anywhere in the country causes delays in other parts that may have perfect weather.
And some airports are more competent than others and you can feel it in the body language of the people who work in the airport. I recently flew out of Rome Italy and it was obvious from the moment we got in line to check our bags that no one at that airport cared whether or not your flight left on time or not. And sure enough, even though we had perfect weather, our destination decent weather, and the plane was waiting at the gate, we were more than an hour late leaving and we missed our downstream flight.
Gotta roll with the punches and be ready to scramble if nevessary.
At the airport, this information can give you a jump on working out a plan B if you are going to miss a connection.
Be careful with flightaware, those inbound flights are not always listed correctly, especially if your at a hub where aircraft may switch. It’s a good proxy, but always best to go to the airlines website and check status.
Add United to the list of keeping their paying customers in the dark. In April 2018, I was on UA from SEA to BWI connecting in DEN. SEA to DEN arrived early, but had to wait in DEN for a gate to open. Still was off plane before sched time. So, I check my next flight to BWI on their app. “On time.” Checked “coming from” for 3 prior legs for this aircraft and all “on time.” Proceed to gate about 45 mins before departure and there find out “Delayed.” Asked agent and was told, “bad weather.” Checked a weather app — clear skies from Vegas to NYC. Upon finally boarding 2 hours later, pilot says, “our plane was moved to another gate for a different flight, sorry.”
Bad weather my “bleep.” That other flight must have had some VERY VIPs on it!
Connecting flight was a one-stop, Hartford – LGA – DEN. Never delayed!
i like your tip and I like flightaware. As other commenters say: don’t use ONLY this data to show up at the airport late. I’ve seen Delta roll out another plane (perhaps a different configuration) at hubs if the inbound is late.
I think that I would feel extremely uncomfortable not going to the airport just due to that. I feel nervous just hanging out in the LOUNGE based on this information 😉