My eight-year-old son has all things airline as his hobby. Tell me, are there
any fun websites that he might enjoy visiting, besides the airline's own
websites? Barry Pascoe, Stockport
Sunday Times travel expert, Richard Green, responds: There's a new
website called www.flightmemory.com
that might just fit the bill. Your son can record all the flights that he's
taken, and the site will calculate how far he's flown, how many airports
he's visited and the like, plus plot the routes on a world map. If he's
really keen, he can also add in lots of other information, like the aircraft
registration, and even the seat numbers he sat in.
This one's a bit US-centric, but it does work for some UK flights. The site is
call www.flightview.com and it
allows you to track a flight's progress live. So if you have friends
travelling on a particular flight, your son can watch their progress on the
screen, rather like a simpler version of the flight map systems they
airlines have in flight as part of their entertainment systems. There's also
lots of information about US airports, and maps showing where severe delays
are occurring.
And then there's www.airliners.net,
which has a vast database of photographs of planes, which can be searched by
airline or aircraft type, or both. Make sure he has a look at the "Most
Popular" images, which include some hair-raisingly skewed touch-downs
into the old Hong Kong airport at Kai Tak, which might just put him off
flying altogether. Then again, it might not.
