How To Track Where Your Plane Is Coming From

Airlines don’t always do an amazing job keeping passengers updated when they anticipate that a flight will be delayed. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been at a gate 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time (20 minutes after boarding was scheduled to start) with the flight showing “on-time,” even though there wasn’t even a plane at the gate.

So every time I fly, I don’t just check the published flight status for my flight, but I also try to figure out where my plane is coming from to determine the odds of there being a delay.

Sometimes this is easy to figure out. For example, if you’re flying Lufthansa from Detroit to Frankfurt, it’s easy enough to figure out that your flight is coming from Frankfurt, and to check the status of that flight. There’s at most one flight per day, so the plane couldn’t be coming from anywhere else.

However, this is significantly more complicated for flights from a hub city or focus city, where the airline has multiple flights per day. Airplanes don’t typically just fly the same routes over and over, but they often cycle through an airline’s route network.

What are the best ways to track the status of your inbound flight, to best determine if your flight may be delayed?

Some airlines show inbound flight status

Some airlines let you track the status of an inbound flight directly on their website. For example, the “big three” US airlines all offer ways to see the inbound aircraft flight status through their websites and/or mobile apps.

In the case of American, just go to the flight status page, and click the “Incoming flight information” link, which will show you where the plane is coming from. If you don’t see that link, it means (or at least is supposed to mean) that the plane is already on the ground.

In the case of United, also go to the flight status page and scroll down, and you’ll see a link that reads “Where’s this aircraft coming from?” That will show you the inbound flight information.

In the case of Delta, you’ll only see this information on the carrier’s app, and not website. Look up the status of a flight, and then you’ll see the “Inbound Flight” section. However, I find that to be glitchy, and it often just lists “N/A.”

Use flight tracking websites to see inbound flight status

There are a variety of flight tracking websites out there, and most of them can help with tracking where the aircraft for a flight is coming from. This doesn’t work 100% of the time, as it depends on the airline and the website. However, between the various websites, you should be able to figure out where your aircraft is coming from.

For example, Flightradar24 is probably my favorite flight tracking website. Just enter the flight number for the flight you’re booked on, and Flightradar24 should show the registration code of the aircraft that you’re scheduled to fly on. Click on that, and it will take you to the activity for that plane, including where the aircraft is coming from.

FlightAware is another popular flight tracking website. Just enter the flight number you’re on, and on the flight page, click the “Track inbound plane” button in the “Flight Details” section. Note that you can click it over and over if your plane is operating many flights that day. So when you get to the previous flight you can also see where that plane is coming from, etc. Often I’ll track the status of the plane I’m supposed to fly on three or four flights out.

FlightView is another website that can help with this. Just enter the information for the flight you’re booked on, and the results page will show a section for “Aircraft’s Previous Flight.”

Like I said, none of these services will work for every single flight, but between them, you should be pretty well covered.

To what extent should you rely on inbound flight status?

Given that airlines often aren’t very good about posting flight delays in advance, to what extent should you trust inbound flight status when deciding when to go to the airport, or deciding when to go to the gate?

I think it depends on the situation. Let me give a couple of examples:

• If I were flying Lufthansa from Miami to Frankfurt and I saw that the plane was late coming from Frankfurt, I would feel comfortable going to the airport late since I know that’s the only plane that could operate that flight
• This gets significantly more complicated at hub airports, where an airline could swap planes around last minute; so generally I wouldn’t go late to the airport at a hub if the inbound is late unless the delay was officially posted

More often than not, the practical application for this is that I’ll often just wait in an airport lounge longer when I know where the inbound flight is coming from.

American is notoriously bad about posting delays in advance. If my flight is scheduled to board at 3PM and depart at 3:30PM, but if I see that the inbound flight only arrived at the gate at 3:10PM, I’d wait in the lounge longer, rather than heading to the gate. However, I’d refresh the inbound flight status every five minutes or so, just to make sure they don’t change planes last minute.

One of the nice things is that many airline apps will nowadays let you know when boarding actually starts, typically based on when the first passenger’s boarding pass is scanned. So that helps with ensuring that you don’t miss a flight due to a delay, at least.

Bottom line

Unfortunately airlines can’t be relied on to properly update flight status in advance, though the good news is that it’s easy enough to look this up on your own. Nowadays many airline websites and apps will give you details on inbound flight information, which is always helpful.

On top of that, there are third party flight tracking services like Flightradar24, FlightAware, and FlightView, which can help you figure out where a plane is coming from.

This is definitely most useful when you’re flying out of an airport where an airline doesn’t have many flights, since you can generally plan around a late inbound flight. However, at a major hub airport there’s always the possibility of planes being swapped last minute, for better or worse.

When flying, do you check inbound flight status as religiously as I do? If so, how do you go about it?