How RunTimeCal works

Forward the confirmation

A flight booking, a season ticket, a council tax bill, a hospital appointment, a payslip notice — forward it to your personal RunTimeCal address, the same way you'd CC a colleague. No form to fill in, no manual entry.

Works with: flight bookings, train tickets, driving appointments, bills, payday notices — anything with a date, time, or place attached.

It reads what matters, then watches

Only the details needed to track the event are kept — a flight number, a route, a due date. Sensitive content like specific financial amounts or medical detail is generalised before anything is stored. From there, it watches the relevant live condition: traffic, flight status, rail disruption, or the calendar itself.

Privacy note: nothing is stored in more detail than the alert actually needs.

Watched quietly in between — not just at the two alert points

Between the day-before alert and your leave-by time, the flight is silently rechecked once. Most of the time this changes nothing and you hear nothing. If it's cancelled, delayed 30+ minutes, or — the one most tools don't catch — now departing 15+ minutes earlier than scheduled, you get an immediate heads-up instead of finding out too late.

Why "earlier" matters too: most flight tools only watch for delays. An early departure is rarer, but arguably more dangerous — it quietly eats into your safety margin instead of giving you more room. This check is free-tier included, not a paid perk.

Worked example

A single flight, start to finish

Here's what actually happens after forwarding one confirmation email for a morning flight from Heathrow.

Day you forward it

Confirmation receivedFlight number, route, and departure time are read from the email. Everything else is discarded.

Evening before your flight departs

Day-before alert (free tier: first 5 events only)A heads-up with the flight's current status and what to expect tomorrow.

Midway between day-before and departure

Silent monitoring checkUsually invisible. Only breaks silence with an immediate alert if the flight's cancelled, delayed 30+ minutes, or now departing 15+ minutes early.

Your calculated leave-the-house time

Pre-departure alertLive flight status is checked fresh once more at this moment and combined with live traffic to the airport, real check-in requirements, and your buffer style and walking pace to give you one number: when to leave home.

Not just for the person flying

Picking someone up works the same way

Forward someone else's flight confirmation — a friend, a family member — and get your own alert for when to leave to be there as they land, not for your own travel.

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Same monitoring, a different destination

Their flight gets exactly the same silent midway check as above — if it's delayed, early, or cancelled, you find out automatically instead of making a wasted early trip, or a late one.

International arrivals: you're also told roughly how long immigration and baggage tend to take at that airport — shown as context alongside the alert, without changing the calculated "leave to collect them" time itself.

Common questions

Before you forward anything

Do I need to install anything?

No. There's no app to install and no new inbox to check — alerts arrive as ordinary emails to the address you already use.

What if my plans change after I forward the email?

A silent check runs midway between the day-before and pre-departure alerts, and live status is checked again once more right at the pre-departure alert itself — so cancellations, major delays, and even early departures are picked up before you'd otherwise find out.

Can I get alerts for someone else's flight?

Yes — forward their confirmation and you'll get told when to leave to be at the airport as they land, with the same background monitoring watching their flight the whole time.

Can I adjust how much buffer time I get?

Yes — a relaxed, standard, or tight buffer style and a slow/average/fast walking pace setting shape every drive-based calculation to match how you actually travel.

Does it work for things other than travel?

Yes — bill due dates, payday, and general appointments all work the same way: forward the email, get told at the right time.

Three steps. No app, no dashboard to remember.