US Airways...flight question??

[mueller74us]

We are flying from Columbus, OH to Charlotte, NC then on to SJU for our cruise.

 

I am checking the weather to see how Charlotte and San Juan should look on our departure day but in an attempt to get the "full picture" I really want to know where our Columbus/Charlotte flight is coming from before it lands in Columbus(so I can check the weather there as well!)

 

Is there any way to look up travel by flight rather than by date or city?

 

Thanks,

Jennifer

[FlyerTalker]

The short answer is that there aren't easy public tools to track the specific aircraft/specific routings for the equipment being used on a particular flight. Airlines have that info, but it usually isn't part of what is released to the public.

 

In the absence of that, things you can do to try to figure this out: Since CMH is an outlying station (not a hub), you can pretty well figure that the flights coming in are likely from either PHL, CLT, DCA, LGA, PHX or LAS. The plane will be turning around, back to a US hub. Find out the equipment used on your flight, then compare that to flights arriving at CMH 40 minutes to 2 hours before your own flight to CLT. That's the likely subset of flights you should consider - airlines only make money when the plane is flying, so having it parked during the day isn't the usual procedure (except with routes like deep South America, where the flying is overnight in both directions, and the planes sit all day in Buenos Aires or Santiago or the like).

 

If you have an early morning flight, the equipment may have arrived the day before and parked overnight at CMH. But in that case, no worries about it being delayed for your flight.

 

USAirways may give you this info over the phone, but it's unlikely, both for operational and security reasons.

 

You can download the US schedule in PDF format at THIS LINK.

[parody]

Here are a couple of other suggestions. One of the OAG's publications includes the detailed flight itineraries of all flights. Thus, for any particular flight it is possible to determine each airport that it goes to on its route. The downside of this is that it is not available free online, although many libraries carry the hard copy editions that come out monthly. Also, if the flight you are connecting to happens to end in Charlotte, it will not be helpful. Thus, the second approach.

 

From many airport websites it is possible to access information that is shown on standard airport arrival/departure screens. Knowing your connecting flight number, it is possible, therefore, to get arrival information such as gate and originating airport. Unfortunately, this does not appear true for CLT. In this instance, using a "flight tracker" site would be the next best option.

[mueller74us]

Thank you both very much!!!

[FlyerTalker]

I think the OP has the following set of flights:

CMH to CLT (aircraft X)

CLT to SJU (aircraft Y)

 

The way I read the question originally posted is: Where is aircraft X flying from on its way to CMH to fly the original leg of the poster's journey? (And you might as well ask the same question for aircraft Y coming into CLT).

 

Since it is highly unlikely that a flight would keep the same flight number transiting an out-station (possible, but rare, IMO), tracking back the CMH-CLT flight number would probably come up dry. You are more likely to have a continuing flight number for aircraft Y coming into CLT and then leaving for SJU (though that wasn't the OP's original question).

 

Just what flights are you talking about, Jennifer? If you post them, I'll take a look at the US schedule and see if I can make any informed guesses.