One of my cousins is making a business trip to Colorado and will stay at my house for two nights. I told him to plan on having supper here, so I'm tracking his flight online using

Flight Tracker

There are a lot of flight tracking programs out there, but I always use this one because even if I don't know the flight number, I can find the flight based on my vague idea of when it was scheduled to depart.

There is a lot of information available on this website, such as a history of all the flights that were assigned the flight number United Airlines 275 (UAL 275). On Saturday November 5, 2011, a Boeing 757-200 designated UAL 275 flew from Chicago O'Hare, leaving 17 minutes late, but it arrived only 7 minutes late in Las Vegas. It left from Gate C21 and unloaded at gate D56.

Another feature is the ability to see all Flights in the Air by fleet operator. In other words, it's easy to see all the Southwest Airlines flights currently in the air and drill down to their destinations, and the same level of detail as above - which gates, when they were scheduled to leave, when they actually left, and the route map.

It's not just scheduled, commercial flights, either - it's all airplanes in the sky at any given moment.

Looking at my cousin's flight tonight, I could view Other Flights Between These Airports and see all the flights enroute and arrived, back to 6:30 this morning.

Why would a person want all this information? I can't speak for you, but I find it interesting, and when I'm planning a vacation it's a way to see what flights go where I want to go, and which ones are on usually on time.

Well, UAL 275 from Boston landed 12 minutes ago and is taxiing toward Gate B37. Time to put the chicken in the oven because I'm about 90 minutes away.