Flight Board
For a fly cruise, Cruise Buddy shows a live airport-style departures board at the top of the Overview tab as each flight gets close. It's the same information you'd see on a screen at the airport — flight code, route, time, terminal, gate and status — pulled from a live flight-status feed when one is available.
📷 Screenshot needed: Flight departures board on the Overview tab (
/images/cruises/flight-board.png)
When the board appears
The board only shows for cruises marked as a Fly cruise that have at least one flight recorded on the Travel tab. To keep the Overview tab uncluttered the rest of the time, each flight's board only appears inside its active window:
From the start of the day before departure until about 3 hours after the scheduled departure time.
Outbound and return flights are tracked independently, so each one shows its own board around its own departure. If a flight has no departure time saved yet, Cruise Buddy falls back to the cruise start date and shows the board on the day before and the day of departure.
Live vs schedule
The tag in the top-right corner of the board is honest about where the information is coming from:
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| LIVE (green, pulsing dot) | A live flight-status feed is connected and the times, gate and status are coming from it. |
| SCHEDULE (grey, static dot) | No live data is available — the board is showing only the times and terminal you saved with the flight. |
Live status is always routed through the Cruise Buddy backend; the app never contacts a flight-data provider directly. If the feed is unreachable or hasn't published anything for your flight yet, the board quietly falls back to SCHEDULE using your saved details — it never invents a gate or a revised time.
What the board shows
- Flight — the airline code and number (for example "BA 207") with the airline name beneath. Cruise Buddy derives the code from the flight number, or pairs a recognised airline with the number's digits.
- Route — the departure and arrival airports as 3-letter codes (for example
LGW → MCO). - Scheduled / Expected time — the departure time. When live data revises the time, the label changes to EXPECTED, the new time is highlighted, and the original scheduled time is shown struck through next to it.
- Terminal and Gate — shown when known; a dash (
—) when not. Gate usually only appears once a live feed reports it. - Status — a colour-coded pill (see below).
- Footer — a plain-language reminder of when the flight leaves ("Tomorrow · Sat, 12 Jul · 09:45") and a Flight details link.
Status labels
| Status | Shown when |
|---|---|
| SCHEDULED | Departure is in the future, no live update yet. |
| ON TIME | Live feed confirms the flight is running to schedule. |
| DELAYED | Live feed reports a later time. |
| BOARDING / GATE CLOSING | Boarding is under way / the gate is about to close. |
| IN FLIGHT | The aircraft is airborne. |
| LANDED | The flight has arrived. |
| DEPARTED | The scheduled time has passed (schedule-only fallback). |
| CANCELLED / DIVERTED | Live feed reports a cancellation or diversion. |
| AWAITING DATA | No departure time and no live status to derive one from. |
Flight details
Tap anywhere on the board (or the Flight details link) to open the full flight record — airline, flight number, airports, departure and arrival times, terminal, booking reference, passenger names and notes — with an Edit button. This is the same sheet reached from the First flight tile on the Overview tab and from the Travel tab.
Privacy
To look up live status, Cruise Buddy sends only the flight number and departure date to its own backend, which fetches the status on your behalf. No cruise, account or device identifiers are sent to the flight-data provider.
Related
- Travel tab — where you add and edit flights.
- Overview tab — where the board appears.
- Reminders — set a notification before a flight.