Limitations
A tool that helps people make travel decisions owes them a clear account of what it does not know. This page is that account.
What WAYFINDER will not do
We do not publish a per-flight or per-vehicle status
No public source we can reach publishes whether a specific flight, train or bus is cancelled, delayed or on time. Operators publish line-level or network-level status, not per-vehicle status. WAYFINDER therefore never invents one. Any product that shows a per-flight status is either licensed to a paid feed or guessing.
We do not show scheduled times, gates or terminals
These are published by the airline and by airport displays. We do not have a feed for them, so the fields exist in the interface and are explicitly marked as not published rather than filled with an estimate.
Our assessment is an assessment
The disruption reading on your situation page is derived from the retrieved official status and warning data. It is labelled as our interpretation, it is never presented as a fact about your journey, and the reasoning behind it is always shown.
Passenger-rights guidance is a pointer, not advice
We quote official guidance and link to the authority that publishes it. Whether a specific rule applies to you depends on your route, your ticket and the cause of the disruption. WAYFINDER cannot and does not determine your entitlement.
Coverage is partial by design
Live integrations cover specific operators and authorities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. For a place outside that coverage the situation page states that no source is expected rather than implying that nothing is happening, and links you to the official page.
The AI layer explains, it does not decide
Identifiers, times, sources and recommended steps are composed from retrieved data. The AI layer contributes plain-language explanation and translation only, and if it is unavailable the deterministic explanation is used instead.
Coverage is real, not universal
Everyday categories — metro, rail, buses, roads, severe weather, public notices and flights — have a working official source. Live integrations cover the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany today. Typing any place is accepted: if it resolves to a country with no live integration, the situation page says so plainly and hands you the responsible official page — for around thirty countries now, from Nigeria and Kenya to Japan, France, Brazil and the UAE — instead of guessing, rather than offering a button that leads nowhere.
Data sources
Every source below is public and requires no credential. Each has a documented limitation, and each is attributed on the situation page where its data is used. Where no live integration exists for a country, the page links the responsible authority through the official-source directory rather than leaving you with nothing — the directory is a list of pages to check, not a source of retrieved status.
Transport for London (TfL) Unified API
https://api.tfl.gov.uk/Line and service status for London Underground, TfL rail and London bus routes, with the operator's own severity wording.
Limitation: Covers London only. Status is at line level, so it says nothing about a specific train or bus you are waiting for.
MTA New York City Transit
https://api.mta.info/GTFS-Realtime subway service alerts for the New York City subway.
Limitation: Covers MTA New York City subway only, and alerts are written for the whole affected line rather than one train.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
https://www.bart.gov/GTFS-Realtime service advisories for the BART network.
Limitation: Covers the San Francisco Bay Area BART network only. Advisory text is published by BART and reused verbatim.
Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD)
https://www.dwd.de/Nationwide official weather warnings for Germany, with the issuing authority's severity level.
Limitation: Covers Germany only. Warnings are issued for regions and districts, so the warning may not apply to your exact location.
California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)
https://cwwp2.dot.ca.gov/Lane and road closures from California's lane-closure feed.
Limitation: Covers California state highways only. Local city and county roads are not included.
UK Government (GOV.UK)
https://www.gov.uk/Official public notices and announcements published by UK government departments.
Limitation: A general government publication feed rather than a real-time alert service, so an item may be policy news rather than an incident affecting you today.
NOAA / National Weather Service
https://api.weather.gov/Active official weather alerts and warnings for the United States, and aviation METAR observations and TAF forecasts for airports worldwide.
Limitation: Active alerts cover the United States only. Aviation observations are typically issued hourly, so a METAR can be up to an hour old, and not every aerodrome publishes one.
Open-Meteo
https://open-meteo.com/A worldwide forecast and the model's value for the current hour, aggregated from national weather services (NOAA GFS, DWD ICON, Météo-France, ECMWF and others).
Limitation: A forecast, not an observation and not a warning. The current reading is model output for the hour, not a station measurement, and only a national meteorological authority can declare a warning. Free for non-commercial use under CC BY 4.0; attribution is shown with the data.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/Recent seismic events from the USGS earthquake catalogue.
Limitation: Reports earthquakes from a global catalogue but with varying detection completeness by region. Magnitudes are revised after an event, so a figure can change.
FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center
https://www.fly.faa.gov/National Airspace System status, including ground delay and ground stop programmes.
Limitation: Covers United States airports and airspace only. A non-US route will show no constraint data, which is expected rather than an error.
Updates and caching
- Provider responses are cached briefly on the server and revalidated, so repeated checks do not overwhelm the upstream services.
- Your situation page re-checks its sources every two minutes while it is open and the tab is visible. Background tabs are not polled.
- When a provider fails, the last valid result is kept and labelled as out of date. WAYFINDER does not present stale information as current, and it does not blank the page.
- The update timeline lists only changes detected between two real retrievals. No history is invented to make the page look active.