can I find out why a (commercial) flight was cancelled?

Badger

Badger

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Badger
Yesterday my daughters flight was cancelled, and the airline stated "due to weather"

While this may be very true, it also might be false and their way of getting out of thousands of dollars of passenger costs. It was the last flight of the day.
I looked at weather, and there were a few areas of suspect weather in the country, but not many. I have not yet verified the location the incoming flight, of course that is likely where the problem was (IF in fact weather had anything to do with this at all) Destination and flight path were acceptable (in my eyes)

Question: is there a web site that airlines must post the reason cancelled flights? Of course they would potentially post "weather", but if FAA has any oversight, maybe airlines would have to post factual info.
 
Where was her flight equipment coming from? Work the trail back and see if any of those flights were weather delayed as well......

I would not put it past them to label equipment issues as weather.... saves the $$$ if passengers claim their rights.
 
What flight was it? Weather was nasty in the northeast. We almost had to gate return and cancel due to me timing out. Lots of routes shut down. It’s not easy to delay the flight 5 hours and expect crews to be in position, especially if they’re at an outstation. Also, mainline tends to cancel RJs more than their own to help out the operation.
 
I’ve wondered this same thing. I’ve tried to do some digging and I haven’t found any resource that has this information.

I’m curious what actually triggers a flight to cancel? Of course, I know there’s a multitude of reasons that it can happen, but there must be a certain point where after delaying it for long, or some situation occurring that it ultimately ends up canceling.
 
Yesterday, Aug 20th, there was some nasty T-Storms midday around KORD. With a name like ‘Badger’ did she fly towards the Upper Midwest? ORD had cancellations & major delays. Of course I don’t know the specifics of your flight in question.

Here is a random example of the 20th, midday, getting into ORD. See what flightaware has to offer, then bounce that off any airline site flight details.905DA972-FAB5-4FBE-9A9A-AF5B5EDF2947.png
 
We got hit with weather. I battled it from pensacola to houston ORD was hit, flew to knoxville empty fighting a line of tstorms.
WX delays and crews start timing out and theres only so much you can cover with reserves, planes out of position etc.

Granted i just work for one regional but if its a MX or crew cancelation they are always honest about it.
 
She was scheduled to fly LaGuardia to Madison (WI) last evening departing 9:00 est. Arriving approx 10:30 cst
 
The northeast has been a complete **** show recently. Storm in Texas? NYC gets shut down, at least it feels that way.

You will not find any reason besides what the airline states.
 
Morgan3820 said:
Curious. What would you do with the information if you find it?
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If it was crew or equipment issues vs weather, then the airline is responsible for certain costs incurred. Such as hotel, Uber,meals, etc. Weather cancellation gives the airline minimal cost.
 
If the airline said “weather”, that’s what will show up anywhere you may look. And yes, it may be a crock...we had a “weather” cancellation due to widespread clear weather across out flight. More than likely, it was weather where the airplanes were coming from, and either they couldn’t get airplanes where they needed to complete your flight, or the weather delays kicked crews past duty time limits.
 
Badger said:
She was scheduled to fly LaGuardia to Madison (WI) last evening departing 9:00 est. Arriving approx 10:30 cst
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That was Skywest flying for Delta. As others have noted, any of the airlines will call it 'weather' if they can't get a plane or crew in place for the flight due to weather somewhere else. The weather doesn't necessarily have to affect the flight directly. Kind of BS I know, but it is what it is.
 
Badger said:
is there a web site that airlines must post the reason cancelled flights?
Click to expand...
Not that I have seen. But defining it as weather keeps the passenger rights requirements at bay. But I do know that weather can indirectly cancel flights also. 2 weeks ago I was flying out of ANC and the night before 2 flights were cancelled: EWR and ORD due to severe weather on east coast. They were cancelling domestic flights to make room for enroute overseas flights. So it doesn't necessarily mean there was bad weather for a particular route.
 
There was this one time my family and I were flying back from Denver to DFW, and there were some storms in the DFW area. Ultimately, American canceled all of their flights, with the gate agents announcing that there was a "ground stop at DFW because of weather." As I believe you know, when an airline cancels flights as a result of weather, they have no obligation to accommodate the disruption with compensation for passengers (and they certainly did not do so for the three or four flights worth of displaced passengers that day).

I took it upon myself to look up the ground stop, and sure enough, there was a ground stop issued. I learned something new that day, however; the ground to stop, as issued, applied only to American Airlines flights, and in the comment section, it stated that it was "Issued at the request of American Airlines."

As we were walking through the terminal, trying to figure out what we were going to do, we observed that a Spirit Airlines flight to DFW was departing (it arrived at DFW without issue), and I also noted that a Frontier Airlines flight apparently had no difficulty completing the trip to DFW, as well.

I rather suspect that, with all of the disruptions in their system that come from a spate of bad weather at their largest hub, the airline finds it more expedient to simply cancel the entire schedule and start over the next day; it certainly seems that, if they did not exercise that option when needed, they could have an egregious problem with crews that are timed out and in the wrong places, and aircraft in the wrong places as well. In fact, it probably works out to negatively affect fewer people overall; none of that is comforting, however, when you are one of the ones affected, and being deceived as to the reason was not all that satisfying.

For us, it worked out kind of okay, because we were able to get a room at the airport hotel (300 bucks, but who's counting?), And the airline did get us out on the first flight in the morning, something I think we accomplished because we had purchased first-class tickets.
 
SCCutler said:
I rather suspect that, with all of the disruptions in their system that come from a spate of bad weather at their largest hub, the airline finds it more expedient to simply cancel the entire schedule and start over the next day; it certainly seems that, if they did not exercise that option when needed, they could have an egregious problem with crews that are timed out and in the wrong places, and aircraft in the wrong places as well. In fact, it probably works out to negatively affect fewer people overall; none of that is comforting, however, when you are one of the ones affected, and being deceived as to the reason was not all that satisfying.
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A lot of these types of shutdowns have occurred ever since the Tarmac Delay Rule came into effect. Massive delays and diversions can result in more aircraft being on the ground than there are gates available to deplane. An airline can be heavily fined ($10,000 per passenger IIRC) for any aircraft that sits on the ramp for more than 3 hours and the passengers can't get off. In our region, we have seen Delta cancel 100s of flights and essentially shut down their MSP operations when storms or blizzards were moving in, versus risking the fines from the DOT.
 
Anyone in CLT? There’s a ground delay to LGA until 530. I’m at A7 waiting to go to LGA
 
Badger said:
Yesterday my daughters flight was cancelled, and the airline stated "due to weather"

While this may be very true, it also might be false and their way of getting out of thousands of dollars of passenger costs. It was the last flight of the day.
I looked at weather, and there were a few areas of suspect weather in the country, but not many. I have not yet verified the location the incoming flight, of course that is likely where the problem was (IF in fact weather had anything to do with this at all) Destination and flight path were acceptable (in my eyes)

Question: is there a web site that airlines must post the reason cancelled flights? Of course they would potentially post "weather", but if FAA has any oversight, maybe airlines would have to post factual info.
Click to expand...

It seems to me that in place like ORD and PHL they get delays or cancels if the weather is below VFR. I always suspected if their capacity numbers is based on airplanes flying a visual approach.
 
IK04 said:
Was it America Airlines? They will cancel due to the sun coming up and calling it "weather."
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Isn’t that the truth! I flew out west and back with AA this past July for the first time and was not very impressed.
 
There are a couple of sources. One is ExpertFlyer, which often has status information for the airlines (not all of them, though).

A friend just caught AA lying through their teeth - they said "weather", and he had (good) information that it was mechanical and they ended up having to admit that he was right. Sometimes the data they put into the passenger system (and thus reported to the FAA/DOT) is outright wrong.
 
An airline will issue a ground stop at a hub when weather has so disrupted operations that the gates are still occupied by flights that should have departed some time ago, or even are still inbound from earlier diverts. Without the ground stop, more flights will come in than they have gates for which would create long tarmac delays. Other airlines can often continue flying into the same airport with minimal delays because the airport is not a hub for them and there is not a backup of aircraft for their gates.

A delay such as this can be coded as either ATC or weather. Both are correct. Both are considered outside the airline's control and affect the passenger compensation in the same way. The same is true for delays due to lack of/late crews or airplanes. Weather/ATC delays impacted the crew's/aircraft's earlier flights preventing them from being ready on time for your flight.

These flights probably have delay codes for both weather and ATC delays in their records. The delay reason you see on the website or app is just the MOST RECENT delay code applied to the flight. Sometimes five or six different delays codes are assigned to a flight. The passengers generally only see the last one. This can produce a situation where a flight is delayed due to ATC ground stop, thunderstorms passing over the field, inbound aircraft late, and a late inbound crew member showing on the website as delayed due to "Servicing aircraft" because, after all those other delay reasons had been resolved, the flight was further delayed waiting for the fuel truck or caterers. All of the reasons that contributed to the delay are logged and used internally by the airline.

Another situation is where weather is impacting flights in many areas of the country but doesn't seem to impact your flight's origin and destination airport. When weather affects hub airports, the departure and arrival routes for a hub, or even portions of the enroute environment, ATC will adjust by limiting the number of aircraft that it will accept on a routing or to/from particular airports. The ATC command center in Washington informs each airline's ATC desk how many slot will be allocated to them then the airline decides how to best use the available slots to minimize the overall disruption caused by the weather event. This may include cancelling flights that don't appear to have weather affecting them.

Most ATC delays are weather delays. Only if ATC has an equipment outage, an airport has runway(s) closed, or VIP movement closes an airport, would an ATC delay be something other than weather.
 
sarangan said:
It seems to me that in place like ORD and PHL they get delays or cancels if the weather is below VFR. I always suspected if their capacity numbers is based on airplanes flying a visual approach.
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That is the case as well. Big hubs are usually scheduled at peak times to nearly their maximum capacity in VFR conditions. IFR conditions require greater separation standards which reduces capacity. Airlines react by delaying or cancelling flights to reduce the amount of aircraft holding or having to divert. Often the smaller aircraft on the shorter legs are impacted first.
 
Larry in TN said:
An airline will issue a ground stop at a hub when weather has so disrupted operations that the gates are still occupied by flights that should have departed some time ago, or even are still inbound from earlier diverts. Without the ground stop, more flights will come in than they have gates for which would create long tarmac delays. Other airlines can often continue flying into the same airport with minimal delays because the airport is not a hub for them and there is not a backup of aircraft for their gates.

A delay such as this can be coded as either ATC or weather. Both are correct. Both are considered outside the airline's control and affect the passenger compensation in the same way. The same is true for delays due to lack of/late crews or airplanes. Weather/ATC delays impacted the crew's/aircraft's earlier flights preventing them from being ready on time for your flight.

These flights probably have delay codes for both weather and ATC delays in their records. The delay reason you see on the website or app is just the MOST RECENT delay code applied to the flight. Sometimes five or six different delays codes are assigned to a flight. The passengers generally only see the last one. This can produce a situation where a flight is delayed due to ATC ground stop, thunderstorms passing over the field, inbound aircraft late, and a late inbound crew member showing on the website as delayed due to "Servicing aircraft" because, after all those other delay reasons had been resolved, the flight was further delayed waiting for the fuel truck or caterers. All of the reasons that contributed to the delay are logged and used internally by the airline.

Another situation is where weather is impacting flights in many areas of the country but doesn't seem to impact your flight's origin and destination airport. When weather affects hub airports, the departure and arrival routes for a hub, or even portions of the enroute environment, ATC will adjust by limiting the number of aircraft that it will accept on a routing or to/from particular airports. The ATC command center in Washington informs each airline's ATC desk how many slot will be allocated to them then the airline decides how to best use the available slots to minimize the overall disruption caused by the weather event. This may include cancelling flights that don't appear to have weather affecting them.

Most ATC delays are weather delays. Only if ATC has an equipment outage, an airport has runway(s) closed, or VIP movement closes an airport, would an ATC delay be something other than weather.
Click to expand...

SCCutler said:
There was this one time my family and I were flying back from Denver to DFW, and there were some storms in the DFW area. Ultimately, American canceled all of their flights, with the gate agents announcing that there was a "ground stop at DFW because of weather." As I believe you know, when an airline cancels flights as a result of weather, they have no obligation to accommodate the disruption with compensation for passengers (and they certainly did not do so for the three or four flights worth of displaced passengers that day).

I took it upon myself to look up the ground stop, and sure enough, there was a ground stop issued. I learned something new that day, however; the ground to stop, as issued, applied only to American Airlines flights, and in the comment section, it stated that it was "Issued at the request of American Airlines."

As we were walking through the terminal, trying to figure out what we were going to do, we observed that a Spirit Airlines flight to DFW was departing (it arrived at DFW without issue), and I also noted that a Frontier Airlines flight apparently had no difficulty completing the trip to DFW, as well.

I rather suspect that, with all of the disruptions in their system that come from a spate of bad weather at their largest hub, the airline finds it more expedient to simply cancel the entire schedule and start over the next day; it certainly seems that, if they did not exercise that option when needed, they could have an egregious problem with crews that are timed out and in the wrong places, and aircraft in the wrong places as well. In fact, it probably works out to negatively affect fewer people overall; none of that is comforting, however, when you are one of the ones affected, and being deceived as to the reason was not all that satisfying.

For us, it worked out kind of okay, because we were able to get a room at the airport hotel (300 bucks, but who's counting?), And the airline did get us out on the first flight in the morning, something I think we accomplished because we had purchased first-class tickets.
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Larry, per the above post, why would an airline have an ATC ground stop "Issued at the request of American Airlines" when the company is completely in control of where it sends its flights?

Seems like gaming the system to limit costs and pass the buck on the PAX announcements.
 
I'm sure I'm alone in this belief, but here I go:

/Rant on

No airline wants to cancel or delay a flight for any reason
No Pilot wants to cancel or delay a flight for any reason
No Flight attendant wants to cancel or delay a flight for any reason
No Gate Agent wants to cancel or delay a flight for any reason <- they want it the LEAST because they have to deal with the passengers
No Reservations Agent wants it to happen <- they hear about it from more people than all of the above

It's a major league PITA for all involved. And it's more of a pain for them than it is for you, the passenger.

What I like is watching *******s berate the Gate Agent for such stuff, so I can politely get what I need very quickly. Best thing for me to hear is some blowhard say "What's your name, and what's your supervisor's name." That just means I can start my convo with, thanks for that display of patience. Can you help me with....

So, suck it up buttercups. No need to go interweb surfing to prove the evil empire has wronged you. They'd prefer to get your meat in the seat and deliver said seat to destination as quickly as humanly possible.

/Rant off
 
Well, of course they don't want to cancel the flight, but when they have the option of cancelling the flight without penalty (wx) vs with penalty (crew/mx) which do you think they are going to say it is, even if it isn't. Just because your crew was scheduled to go from MSN - MSP - GRR - DTW - CMH and there was a T-storm that affected only Madison, don't give me that it's a weather cancellation from DTW to CMH because the crew timed out. No, it's a scheduling cancellation, and the airline should be on the hook for that.
 
EdFred said:
No, it's a scheduling cancellation, and the airline should be on the hook for that.
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So your issue is that you're not given a coupon for inedible food court crap food and a hotel room you wouldn't let your ex-mother-in-law stay in?

If that's an "improvement" I don't know.

I still prefer to suck it up, do my thing, and move along happily.

But I'm glad there are so many people to help me appear reasonable. <- I did say appear
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
Larry, per the above post, why would an airline have an ATC ground stop "Issued at the request of American Airlines" when the company is completely in control of where it sends its flights?

Seems like gaming the system to limit costs and pass the buck on the PAX announcements.
Click to expand...
It is the most efficient way to stop, and later re-start, all company flights to a particular destination. ATC has a system in place which can quickly distribute the message to all applicable facilities and stop all departures almost immediately. The airline would have to contact each flight separately.

It isn't gaming anything. As I said, while you may see "ATC" as the delay code in the app or web site, that is the most recently entered delay code. The reason which caused the ATC hold is also recorded. It doesn't matter if it is "ATC" or "Weather". Passenger compensation is the same.

Airlines don't issue a ground stop because an airplane is down for maintenance or a First Officer called in sick.
 
Ravioli said:
So your issue is that you're not given a coupon for inedible food court crap food and a hotel room you wouldn't let your ex-mother-in-law stay in?

If that's an "improvement" I don't know.

I still prefer to suck it up, do my thing, and move along happily.

But I'm glad there are so many people to help me appear reasonable. <- I did say appear
Click to expand...

If I gotta stay in a crap hotel room and pay for food, I'd rather have someone else pay for it. Maybe I am more reasonable than you, because the vouchers I've gotten weren't for inedible food, and the hotel was nice.
 
Here's a good one...

After FINALLY getting in an airplane and getting pushed back in Charlotte, we sat for what seemed like too long and then taxied back to the gate for a light (annunciator) that had to be reset.

Thankfully, the FO figured out that the RADAR altimeter antennas were sitting over a steel drain grate and the resulting erroneous altitude tripped the advisory. Once reset, the altimeter worked fine at the gate, so we were able to continue on only an hour or so late...
 
American Eagle has a knack for cancelling flights with a lot of open seats for weather and mechanical. Funny how the full flights don't have that problem.
 
Its so much fun to watch a bunch of GA pilots make crap up about how airlines work, and then proceed to ignore the guys who have 121 experience and know how it works.
 
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