Trust & transparency

How FlightQ handles aviation data

Aviation data changes constantly and different feeds answer different questions. This page states what FlightQ counts, what it estimates, how pages qualify for search, and where our confidence stops.

Definitions used across the tools

Nonstop destination: A destination reached from the origin without an intermediate landing in the current schedule snapshot. It is counted once even when several airlines operate it.
Direct flight: FlightQ uses “direct” as a plain-language synonym for nonstop on route-map pages. Some airlines use “direct” for a same-flight-number service with a stop; those are not counted as nonstop here.
Operating carrier: The airline scheduled to operate the aircraft. Marketing carriers and codeshare flight numbers can create duplicates, so route and airline totals are grouped around operating-carrier rows where the feed provides them.
Scheduled frequency: Published departures captured in the current refresh window, divided by the observation window. It is not a promise that every flight will operate and should not be used as a live departure board.
Observed flight time: An average derived from tracked completed flights when enough observations exist.
Estimated flight time: A great-circle-distance estimate with a climb, descent and ground-time allowance. Estimates are marked with a tilde or described as estimated.
Current vs. historical: Route maps prioritize the latest complete schedule window. Tracked-flight summaries can cover an older observation period and show their last-observed date. Retired or upcoming fleet and seat configurations are not presented as current.

Quality gates by tool

Routes and airport pages

The /from tool is a focused current-schedule explorer: one row per nonstop destination, with grouped operating airlines and frequency. /airports is the broader airport profile, combining the same route layer with terminals, operator rankings, aircraft, geography and tracked-route summaries. Counts can differ only when a page clearly applies a stricter passenger-service, completeness or indexing filter.

Airline fleets

Fleet pages distinguish aircraft in service from aircraft on order. Known not-yet-in-service variants are forced to zero in service, and hand-maintained corrections carry a review-by date that fails CI when it expires. Schedule-derived aircraft are labelled separately from curated fleet inventory.

Seat maps

Validated layouts must reproduce stored cabin totals exactly. Coordinate-validated and config-validated are different confidence levels. “Source-verified” is reserved for a relevant public source link checked within 180 days. Retired, upcoming, stale, future-dated or provenance-incomplete layouts are excluded from the sitemap, primary discovery and indexing.

Aircraft comparisons

Programmatic comparison pages are indexable only when both aircraft belong to a meaningful role class and at least three numeric specifications differ. Cross-class and near-duplicate comparisons can render for users but remain noindex and are omitted from the sitemap.

Freshness, corrections and search eligibility

Pages show a source date or sample window when the underlying dataset supplies one. A page can remain available to people while being excluded from search when it is thin, stale, contradictory, retired or under review. Sitemap membership and page robots rules share eligibility functions on the data tools where those gates apply, so a noindexed URL is not intentionally submitted.

To report a problem, email support@flightq.app with the page URL, the incorrect field and a source when possible. Seat-map pages also include a structured report form.