FAA Website Offers Several Options for Checking Flight Delays Online

During the holidays and all year round, flight delays can be a big problem for travelers, especially with the growing number of flights and the congestion at certain airports. Throw in some bad weather, and things can really get crazy. Sometimes, it helps to know what you're facing before you head to the airport, and the Federal Aviation Administration has a website that can help you do that. Their website includes delay information for major airports in the U.S. and is easy to check from home, or your cellphone.

Here's how it works: when you go to the FAA Flight Information Website you can see delays at a glance. There's a map of the U.S. and dots representing major airports. The dots are color-coded. Green means there are no delays. Yellow represents delays of 16-45 minutes on departures and/or arrivals. Red means the delays are more than 45 minutes, and a black dot means the airport is closed. An Orange dot means that flights heading to that airport are delayed, so you have to check and see what's going on at the departure airport.

If you scroll over the dots, without clicking, you get more details. For example, earlier, JFK airport in New York was orange. The information box that popped up said that due to weather and low visibility, departure traffic was subject to delays, and there were some general delays because of a traffic management program delaying some arriving flights. It recommended that people call their airline.

Once you click on the dot, more information becomes available. This is the message that appeared: Due to WX/LOW VIS, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving John F Kennedy International Airport, New York, NY (JFK). This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 2 hours and 11 minutes. (I guess the dot wasn't red because it was only 'some' and not all.)

There was also a list of "Delays by Destination", in which it spelled out that flights to Logan International Airport in Boston were experiencing about 53 minute delays because of the weather. It also said flights to Philadelphia were seeing delays averaging 1 hour and 37 minutes.

To check a simplified version of the delay website, on your phone or PDA, they have a site that gives you a written list of delays, without the map of the U.S. That can be located at: www.faa.gov/wireless/. That essentially lists only the delays, if an airport is green on the map, you won't expect to see anything listed here.

Plus, you can get delay e-mails forwarded to your BlackBerry or other device by registering for the AIS - Aviation Information System on the FAA website.

With that system, you can pick the airports you're interested in, and they'll send you e-mails about delays. They recommend that you just put in a couple of airports, though, so that you don't get a million e-mails. You can change your e-mail preferences for each trip you take and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Overall, the site isn't going to get you out of delays, but it can help you anticipate when your travel is going to be slow. It also doesn't list smaller airports, so that is a problem. Also, keep in mind that this website should just be one source of information for travelers. To be on the safe side, it's probably best to also call your airline to see what information you can get on your specific flight.