Google Says It Can Predict When Your Flight Is Going to Be Late Apparently even better than the airports can.

By Nina Zipkin

Shutterstock

It seems that there is no consensus about how much longer we'll be stuck with winter. Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow -- ostensibly predicting six more weeks of winter -- while the less alliteratively named Staten Island Chuck did not.

Now, predictions are a tricky business, but it seems that we're going to continue to deal with precipitation and chilly temperatures at least for the time being, and that means travel delays, especially for flights.

Google might be a little bit more adept at attempting to see the future than a groundhog. The search giant said that an update of its Google Flights app is making it possible to predict whether your flight will be delayed, even before the airlines figure it out.

Related: Emotional Support Peacock Rejected to Fly by United Airlines

"Flights already shows delays, and now we're sharing reasons for those delays and delay predictions too," the company explained in a blog post. "Using historic flight status data, our machine learning algorithms can predict some delays even when this information isn't available from airlines yet -- and delays are only flagged when we're at least 80 percent confident in the prediction."

The company doesn't suggest relying solely on Google Flights to decide whether you should go to the airport or not as things can always change, but at least you'll have a sense of how long you're going to potentially be stuck in the terminal.

Nina Zipkin

Entrepreneur Staff

Staff Writer. Covers leadership, media, technology and culture.

Nina Zipkin is a staff writer at Entrepreneur.com. She frequently covers leadership, media, tech, startups, culture and workplace trends.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Business Ideas

70 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2025

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2025.

Buying / Investing in Business

Big Investors Are Betting on This 'Unlisted' Stock

You can join them as an early-stage investor as this company disrupts a $1.3T market.

Science & Technology

How AI Is Turning High School Students Into the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs

As AI reshapes education, students are turning school problems into products and building the future economy.

Buying / Investing in Business

From a $120M Acquisition to a $1.3T Market

Co-ownership is creating big opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Leadership

My Business Hit $1 Million — Then a $46,000 Mistake Exposed the Biggest Bottleneck to Explosive Growth

How a costly mistake forced me to confront the real barrier to scaling and the changes that unlocked explosive growth beyond $1 million.