On January 15, 2008 a US Airways plane (flight 1549) made a crash landing in the Hudson River.  Luckily, there was not a single fatality.  Before they leave to pick up their loved ones, many people check the flight status to make sure it’s on time.  So I wondered: does it tell them that the flight crashed (certainly, that would cause panic)?  or does it tell them the flight arrived or is delayed (that would likely cause confusion)?

When flight 1549 crashed, I decided to observe how they handled it.  I found that various websites handled it differently.  Several websites listed that it had already arrived at the destination.  Flightstats.com showed that the flight had landed, but was 19 minutes late (screenshot shown to the right).  True, they had landed…but not at the destination. When I went to USAirways.com, their site was bogged down for a couple hours because of all the traffic.

I finally managed to reach their flight status page after several tries.  Rather than display a status, the website instructed the user to call the airline (screenshot shown below).  Which is smart, when you think about it.  It’s a more service-oriented and accurate way of handling the situation.  And then they can give those concerned more information as it comes out.  Well executed!