Shrunken URLs for Air Canada Flight Status

Air Canada doesn’t make it easy to link directly to flight status information on their website, hiding the information in a pop-up window behind a complex URL that looks like this:

http://book.aircanada.com/pl/AConline/en/OverrideServlet
?USERID=GUEST
&EXTERNAL_ID=GUEST
&EMBEDDED_TRANSACTION=FlifoInfoServlet
&SO_SITE_OFFICE_ID=YULAC18AB
&LANGUAGE=US
&COUNTRY=CA
&SITE=SAADSAAD
&TRIP_FLOW=YES
&BOOKING_FLOW=NONE
&PRIVATE_LABEL=ACO_AC_AIR
&MARKET=CA
&AIRLINE_CODE=AC
&FLIGHT_NUMBER=7489
&B_DATE=200703180900

To avoid either having to visit the Air Canada website or entering a long URL like this, I hacked together a little PHP redirecting magic to enable the following:

• http://ruk.ca/ac
• http://ruk.ca/ac/FLIGHTNUMBER
• http://ruk.ca/ac/FLIGHTNUMBER/DATE

The default date, if you don’t specify, is the current one; otherwise use YYYYMMDD. For example, to get the status of today’s flight 7489 from Charlottetown to Halifax:

• http://ruk.ca/ac/7489

Or to get the status of flight 861 on March 27th:

• http://ruk.ca/ac/861/20070327

Omit both the date and the flight number, and you’ll get a form where you can fill both in. You’re welcome to use this for your own personal convenience (with the proviso that it make break or disappear at some future date).