Real-time flight updates from Sydney Airport on Twitter

When you’re waiting for a friend to arrive at Sydney Airport or you’ve got a flight of your own, real-time flight updates are a pretty important tool in the modern age – flights can be delayed minutes or hours and that could mean the difference between $10 parking or $100 the way our airports charge.

Today Sydney Airport launched a real-time flight information service for passengers and friends of those travelling into Australia’s busiest city.  Twitter updates.

It’s quite simple.  Send a tweet to @flySYD with a flight number and you’ll receive a message welcoming you to the updates, followed by a message with the current arrival or departure information.

As the flight nears, you’ll get any updates of the flight status should it change.

Simple.  Effective.  Especially for those who are regular twitter users.

This is not the kind of service that will get people joining twitter, but for those of us on Twitter it’s a great addition.

I guess my only question is does Sydney Airport see this as a real requirement for interaction, or just a great way to demonstrate innovation (which it does).

I’m a long time user of @BinNightBot – this twitter account reminds me every Monday night at a random time that the bins need to go out.  Can’t get that anywhere else.

But for flight updates, I can simply type VA1 into Google and get real-time flight information about Virgin Australia flight 1.

Google users will also notice real-time updates in Google Now, and Frequent Flyers will get these from the relevant airline apps too.

That same information is now on twitter.  Nice one.

If English is not your first language, the updates are also available in 41 languages.