V-Flyer

Been tinkering again, and added a calendar-view of VS flight schedules to the website here.

I created these because I find the current timetables a bit tricky to fathom (ie, date ranges with the days of the week an aircraft flies), so a calendar view shows you instantly whether a route is operating, and the times it's flying.

It also gives me the opportunity to overlay historical data, so you can instantly see on-time performance with colour-coded boxes. Some routes are prettier than others...

Schedules loaded up until Summer 2011, but with the caveat that schedules can change with little notice (and such is the complexity of importing schedules, that I won't be running an update everyday)

Pete

Well done that man!

VS75 MAN to MCO seems pretty punctual which is good. We want to catch a domestic flight at MCO; looking at this record we should be ok.

Hi Pete - looks good but can you explain the red / amber / green system and how you decided to allocate these.

A couple of the flights I looked at were 'red' but were only late by 30 mins or so which to me isn't critical or excessive - especially on a journey time of 7 + hrs

Maybe a green 'on-time' departure / arrival is = <30 mins

amber >30 < 60 and red > 60

Currently (and I'm open to debate on this one), it's green for ontime or early, slightly less green for <15 min delay, amber for <30 min delay and red anything over that.

My thinking was that over thirty minutes was a substantial delay, especially if you're looking at connections (over thirty minutes late in would be a problem, regardless of the overall flight time, if your connection was tight).

But, as I say, open to debate - it's easy enough to change the parameters for the colour coding.

I would say;

Ontime-15mins delay = Green
15-30mins delay = Amber
30min+ delay = Red

Great tool btw, I hate the VS schedules page, it is so difficult to actually get the information, so this will be most useful.

Neil wrote:I would say;

Ontime-15mins delay = Green
15-30mins delay = Amber
30min+ delay = Red

Great tool btw, I hate the VS schedules page, it is so difficult to actually get the information, so this will be most useful.

Sounds like what we have now, but dropping one shade of green

Pete wrote:
Sounds like what we have now, but dropping one shade of green

2 shades of the same colour is just confusing

I was really just backing up your initial call, as I agree, a 30mins delay on say a 6 hour NYC flight is quite substantial.

A great tool!
One thing that might make it even better would be just entering the route and not the flight number - then showing the alternative flights available on the calender.

Sorry Pete - I always seem to be suggesting more work for you.

One other point - I note VS73 has some future and past flights missing (I know 'cause I'm checked in for one of them!)

Bill S wrote:One other point - I note VS73 has some future and past flights missing (I know 'cause I'm checked in for one of them!)

The data comes from Virgin's own schedule feed, so if it's missing stuff it either means they're not sending it or I'm not parsing it correctly. Give me a couple of examples, and I'll check the source.

I never noticed the two shades of green !

I just wanted to have a bit of a debate as people have different tollerances on what 'on time' and 'late' mean.

Any info what the airlines, not just VS, use to measure 'on time' etc

BUT whatever is decided then it needs to say this on the screens so that people can ultimatly make their own minds up.

Pete wrote:

Bill S wrote:One other point - I note VS73 has some future and past flights missing (I know 'cause I'm checked in for one of them!)

The data comes from Virgin's own schedule feed, so if it's missing stuff it either means they're not sending it or I'm not parsing it correctly. Give me a couple of examples, and I'll check the source.

VS73 MAN-MCO tomorrow 10/04/2010 13:45

There are no VS73 flights listed prior to the 16/04/10

Pete,
Just checked - VS73 was canx. last weekend so may not be in your datafeed - not sure when it started from.
It is flying tomorrow however - or better be, if they are taking check-in!

The datafeed starts with the spring season, so only just started. I've found a couple of new ones in the feed though, including tomorrow's VS73 (I think...)

Yup - its there!
Worried my OH!

Ok, so back to the topic of colour coding, what's the general feeling on the number of colours (if needed at all), and the milestones when each kick in?

30 minutes may be a long time on most routes but MCO is very frequently delayed over 30 minutes due to weather there.
A sea of red does not look good - particularly when it is no fault of VS.
We often see complaints about late flights to/from MCO when really no airline can do much about it.
I doubt it would be easy to differentiate particular routes but feel that red may be inappropriate for just 30mins.
Perhaps green for less than 5 mins late
yellow for up to 30 minutes
yellow/white striped for less than 1 hour
Red for over 1 hour.
And red/white striped for over 2 hours.

Bill S wrote:Perhaps green for less than 5 mins late
yellow for up to 30 minutes
yellow/white striped for less than 1 hour
Red for over 1 hour.
And red/white striped for over 2 hours.

Wouldn't be popular with Neil - he's having problems getting his head around more than three colours (Ok - I'm going to duck now )

Pete

Pete wrote:

Bill S wrote:Perhaps green for less than 5 mins late
yellow for up to 30 minutes
yellow/white striped for less than 1 hour
Red for over 1 hour.
And red/white striped for over 2 hours.

Wouldn't be popular with Neil - he's having problems getting his head around more than three colours (Ok - I'm going to duck now )

Pete

Yellow, Yellow/white striped, Red, Red/White striped

I have to say, that is starting to sound mighty OTT and confusing. I think the 3 traffic light colours work fine, but maybe increase yellow to 45mins and red 45mins +?

Also, is the time, the actual take off time, or push back time? If you take JFK for example, a flight could easily push back on time, yet taxi for a good hour before taking off!

Neil

I've gone for the internationally recognised format (for punctuality checking) of pushback from gate for departure and arrival at gate at the other end (ie, brakes off and brakes on).

If you're stuck on the tarmac for an hour, then you're not necessarily late leaving, but the pilot will have to put his foot down if he aims to get you in on time.

That makes sense, and was what I was thinking/assuming.

I like this too - be good to link back to the vessel from the schedules page?

On timings - well my tuppennyworth is that for departures green for within 15 mins of schedule makes sense, amber for between 15 and 45 mins of schedule and red for over 45 mins is all appropriate. For arrivals anything below up to 15 mins after schedule (including in advance of), amber for up to 45mins and red thereafter is also appropriate. For arrivals, as you say, the most pressing issue is connections - given that most international arrivals connecting through immigration and customs would require a minimum of a 2 hr connection time, this seems entirely appropriate.

So I guess I am saying "yes"

I don't buy the argument about severity of delay being proportionate to duration of flight, in terms of how much that delay is tolerable, when you start talking about longhaul flights.

(Yes, okay, a 3 hour delay on a 1 hour AMS-LHR flight is awful.)

If the flight is late, the flight is late. Pete's point about missed connections is very valid.

Trying to bend the "severity" to make Virgin "look good" is not the point here, is it?

It's about to what degree the timetable is a work of fiction - what is the percentage chance of the flight being delayed, and by how much, so that people can make intelligent travel planning choices.

This provides an easy, at a glance way of doing it too, the more red-toned the history for your chosen flight is, the more leeway you should give yourself. Much better than a dry statistic.

Mike

slinky09 wrote:I like this too - be good to link back to the vessel from the schedules page?

Done

Great feature - just needed to check daughters flight next week and it worked a treat.

Great feature Pete - Thanks for all your efforts

Once again you have proved that V-Flyer is a great source of information

buns