Tag Archives for delays.
There were over 1,350 flight cancellations in the U.S. on Saturday, led by regional carrier Republic which flies for the three largest airlines which saw 35% of flights cancel. When bad weather hits, it’s larger planes carrying more people that are usually given priority. Behind Republic were – in order – United, American, and Delta, together taking the four top spots for cancellations in the world.
Many travelers are at the mercy of airlines when things go wrong. They wait in line to be rebooked and curse at how bad their options are. They become, as my grandfather used to say, “farbissen” or mad at the world.
I write a lot about taking control over your own travel destiny. Here’s what that means.
According to the commentator, American sees that they’re overbooked on the day of travel, delays that flight for a long period so passengers make other plans, and then they no longer have to involuntarily deny anyone boarding.
One of the biggest frustrations airline passengers face is delays – but not just because they may not get where they’re going when they’d hoped, or even miss a connection along the way, but because they’re frequently kept in the dark about what’s going on. They don’t know when to expect they’ll actually leave, and often feel like they’re being lied to.
And they sometimes are lied to! But one United Airlines flight today offered a little too much truth.
Interesting research from Alexander Luttmann at UC Irvine suggests that slot controls don’t actually reduce delays at congested airports because large airlines at major airports “already internalize congestion” when planning their schedules.
That makes sense. Heavily congested airports take longer to get planes in and out. Flight times are longer. That means flights are more expensive — they take up more aircraft time and airlines have to pay their crews more, too.
While the busiest airports see plenty of flights, their largest airlines don’t just keep adding flights because that’s expensive, both for the new flights and for all of their existing flights which suffer greater delays and ultimately get longer flight times.
One consequence of American running a less reliable operation is passengers getting stranded. When the airline blames weather they aren’t responsible for costs like hotel rooms and meals. So airlines have a long history of being less than forthcoming about the true reasons behind operational problems.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
