As long as I can remember, airports have had TV like monitors that give the status of each flight scheduled to arrive. If a plane crashes en route, what do they do with the official status of the flight? Is it “delayed”? “cancelled”? Or something else?
Also, if your plane crashes, do you get frequent flyer miles for the whole trip?
Sorry if the question is a little morbid.
They probably simply remove the flight from the listing.
As far as miles are concerned, you get the number of miles that each flight normally traverses, not the actual number of miles. If you have to take a short detour or spend an hour circling an airport, you don’t get the extra miles.
And if you are dead, how do you plan to use them?
I’ve seen news footage of the waiting area that showed “See Counter”. On 9-11, the online tracker showed some version of “unknown” for the pentagon and pennsylvania flights.
Thanks for asking it, though. I think about this every time I check flight status online…
It varies. TWA 800 seems to be stalking me (see other threads) but I remember seeing news reports from CDG showing an arrival board still listing the flight as ‘cancelled’ many hours after the news had broken.
‘Disaster management’ is probably what the OP’s question really comes under. Another one I remember is the Hatfield crash (will make sense to Brits), where the cameras were alerted in time to get to Leeds station to film GNER staff informing the people intended to meet passengers that there was a slight problem…
(Of course, there was insistence of Leeds station to keep non-ticket-holders off the platforms meant that they were all congregated in a small area along with all the media who probably knew more than anyone else at that point…)
Edit - just to make any sense
I think some airlines allow you to follow the progress of a flight on a real-time map on the airline website showing the position and altitude of the plane. I wonder what would happen if there was a plane crash en route (and of course this is also a bit morbid). (Location: somewhere over the north Atlantic. Altitude: 20,000 feet, now 15,000 feet, now 10,000 feet, etc.)
I’ve read, though I can’t recall where, that the status board will likely say to “see agent”. They do this not just for crashes but pretty much anything that will require a significant amount of gentle news-breaking to, say, family of passengers/crew.
If it’s anything like a radar display in an air traffic control tower (I think some of those website use radar information) it may simply disappear off the screen.
I agree - I was actually thinking about posting this question after my most recent flight. (The thought had occurred to me while I was making my way to a connecting flight.)
I assume that it’s like GorillaMan said: “It varies.” I doubt there’s a standard procedure involved; that is, it’s probably left up to individual airports to handle this in whatever way they see fit (on a case-by-case basis). A large airport hub like Atlanta would probably want to handle a situation like this differently than a smaller airport like St. Louis.
I’d be interested in hearing from someone “in the know”, though.
LilShieste
Every time I’ve seen the subject mentioned in news coverage of an actual crash, it’s been “SEE AGENT”.