This is how my 9-11-2006 started. I pray yours has gone better.
The CEO and analyst of this company called me personally with the answer to my experience. It was not a cruel hoax. It was not a software glitch. It was not even user error! The inaccurate data came directly from the FAA itself. They pulled the raw feed and found the exact results that I experienced online.
They apologized profusely and thanked me for being an unaware quality control test subject. (Insert polite, uncomfortable laughs here.)
The most shocking part for me was learning that this website which pulls its data directly from the FAA provides intelligence to the CIA, FBI, FEMA and countless other government bureaus with regards to national security.
THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION PUTS OUT INACCURATE FLIGHT TRACKING DATA. I’m moving to Canada.
*************************
Mr.Bxxxx 9-11-2006
President & CEO
XXXX Company
Dear Mr. Bxxxx,
My name is Jennifer Sissons, Director, Office of the CEO. I have been a long time XXX.com fan as I use your flight tracking online tool almost daily to track my executive’s air travel. However, today I am no longer a fan.
My CEO Mr. Bxxxx took off this morning from Boston on his way to San Francisco. Being 9-11, I took extra care to watch his flight until it made it safely past NY. Around 10:30am, I checked again to make sure it was safely past Chicago. To my surprise, the site showed the plane heading back toward Boston and had dropped altitude from 36,000 feet to 24,000 feet. For the next hour I watched the plane’s erratic behavior turn south and then back to east with each refresh of the page showing his air speed and altitude dropping. The next refresh showed his plane due east at 10,800 feet with a land speed of 251mph. My travel agent and United assured me that his plane was still on the expected flight path with an on time arrival, yet it was still hard to resist what I was seeing, especially given the anniversary date. The final refresh showed his plane safely over Nebraska at 36,000 feet with a comfortable speed of 506 land miles per hour.
I’m not sure what the problem was. I don’t know if it is a software problem or a cruel hoax from someone with a warped sense of humor, but either way your service is no longer trust worthy and I will no longer be using it.
Best regards,
Jennifer
Jennifer Sissons
Director, Office of the CEO
jsissons@xxxx.com
Jen
I’m sorry there is a big gap in the page. Please forgive me my first post errors. Michael, can you help me fix this?
michael
Well told and timely too.
You know, some of us might get overly excited watching out bosses roller coaster around in the air. However, what if Hil had been on that flight?
And a call back from the CEO…cool.
michael
Jen,on my browser there were no large spaces, but Dan’s displayed the gap you wrote about and we fixed it.
travis
If you’re worried about airplanes being hijacked, the terrorists have won.
Jen
If Hilary were on that flight I would have done everything I did just the same. I would have gotten right on the horn with United and then my travel agent just to make sure, then I would have watched it like a hawk and hyperventilated into a paper bag until I heard her voice on the phone. The difference is I was updating my resume thinking my boss was no longer CEO. :o)
Yes, I admit that I think about it more than I used to when I fly, but I never resist the urge to travel. My heightened anxiety was due to a couple of factors.
1. The CTO of our company was an officer in the Navy for 20 years and helped put together the FEMA disaster relief program and worked closely with them with their risk analysis. Given information that I am not privy to and the recently released video from OBL, he advised us that our CEO should choose another day to fly. Of course our CEO told him to pound sand and took the flight any way.
2. The flight was the same time, date and destination as on 9-11 and it unnerved me that he would be flying with a belly full of fuel. If it were to NJ or even NY, I probably wouldn’t have given it more than a passing thought.
rakkity
My sister’s a pilot, and you should hear her rant about the FAA. Jennifer’s story doesn’t surprise me. I’ll forward it to her and she might be able to tell some other hair-raising stories, too.
My most recent flight came in early in the morning on 9-11-06, but somehow it didn’t even occur to me that it was the 5-year anniversary of the infamous day.