Following an investigation into consistently-late flights, the DOT has threatened to fine those airlines who are operating the worst-offending flights.

But don’t believe the hype. This is great PR for the government, making it sound like they’re really going after the delays that plague American airports. But if reports are accurate, then these “fines” are a lot of hot air: Only 26 flights meet the apparent standard for fines, by being late at least 15 minutes at least 70 percent of the time. 26. Two-six. But over 25 percent of ALL flights arrived late between January and August of 2007. 26 flights, or about 26 percent? Quite a difference.

Plus, count on the operating airlines to muck with the statistics. If flight 421 is consistently late, then they’ll change the flight number to 133 and restart the clock. Poof! Problem solved!

Fines, primetime landing fees, or other financial instruments might reduce delays, but the program as proposed isn’t going to do much for travelers.

If a flight is delayed and it’s not due to weather, you may be due for some compensation, according to the airline’s contract of carriage. But if the delay can be attributed to weather, you’re out of luck. Guess what they’ll try to blame… So how do you find the truth?

Following on Scott McCartney’s review of various flight status services, Gary Leff offers a great, if counterintuitive, tip for finding the real cause of delays: Use the airline’s cargo website.

For some reason, some airlines offer the real reason for flight delays to their cargo customers, but not their passengers. But not all airlines do this. In my experience, United and American cargo sites offer reasons for delays — reasons which may differ from the regular airline site. If you’re delayed, log in and check both the regular and cargo sites to see why. If it’s not weather, print-screen, then start negotiating with the gate agent.

Unfortunately, Northwest, Continental, and Southwest cargo sites don’t seem to give any different info than their passenger sites. Delta and US Airways cargo sites don’t even give flight tracking.

If the cargo route fails you, or if you’re looking for some all-purpose flight tracking, I generally recommend flightstats.com and flightaware.com. Flightstats offers great, detailed information on everything from gate information to runway statistics. Flightaware offers snappy live-updating maps and route information for the actual flight en route, but less practical info for the person actually traveling.

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The hardcore aviation insiders at IAG ran some numbers on Northwest’s fleet, and find that some of the oldest planes are causing some of the worst delays.

One single plane was responsible for 2564 minutes of delays alone, year to date.

This isn’t really a surprise, considering that the DC-9 hasn’t been built since October 1982, but the airline should really start looking at replacing these tired old birds.

Unfortunately, there’s no way for Northwest’s travelers to know which individual aircraft will be operating on their route, so you can’t avoid the worst planes. But you might try avoiding the DC-9s as a general rule, unless you’re into vintage aircraft. Or you’re into delays.

As an added bonus, the Denver status page reads:

Due to CAT III’S ARE RELEASED, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving Denver International Airport, Denver, CO (DEN).

Huh? Wikipedia tells me that “Cat III” has to do with instrument landing systems, but I have no idea what this really means. (Any pilots out there want to explain it in comments?) Hey, FAA, how about a glossary?

We’ll see where I end up tonight. Wish me luck.

I hit the US Air website. It said that the flight had taken off 3 minutes before it was scheduled to and had landed exactly on time, although the status was “UNKNOWN”. For the next hour that “UNKNOWN” label, as I refreshed and refreshed, worried me more and more. I’m picturing all sorts of horrible things. Still no call from husband. I start planning my life as a single mother, when finally at 3:20PM, I got a call from him, saying he was finally on the ground. I asked how that could be since he’d taken off on time. He told me that the plane did not leave on time, and that it was about 11AM before they took off.

While most seasoned travelers would say the letter-writer overreacted, even in the current culture of fear, the author probably had some reason to be scared. After all, when airlines experience “incidents” they often remove the flight from the airport monitors and online status pages. But of course programming errors happen, and thankfully the “unknown” flight was just delayed.

Never just rely on the airline’s own website for flight status. Instead, check out FlightAware, the site devoted to tracking all flights in American airspace. You’ll see the actual time of takeoff, landing, a neat map of the flight route, and some dorky data on speed, altitude, etc.

But most importantly, FlightAware reports two different pieces of information than most airline websites: Wheels-up and wheels-down times. Airlines categorize flights by the times the plane is out, up, down, and in. “Out” and “in” refer to the departure and arrival at the gate. “Up” and “down” refer to the takeoff and landing on the runway.

Instead of fretting about the “missing” flight on the US Airways site, the reader could have seen that the plane was delayed, but airborne.

Extra bonus: With FlightAware, you can even track private jets, charters, and UPS or FedEx flights — though I’m not sure you really need to track your shipment that way… (It’s probably especially handy for private jets.)

Creating a free login on the site also lets you automatically refresh the live map of the actual flight route. You also get access to historical wheels up/down times, (not just the gate departure/arrival times) if you want to see how much time the flight actually spends in the air. The maps are fun — hours of dorky procrastinatory fun!