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Weather Related Advice - Do they delay or cancel flights?

Weather Related Advice - Do they delay or cancel flights?

Old Jan 25, 2011, 9:40 pm
  #1  
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Join Date: Jan 2011
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Weather Related Advice - Do they delay or cancel flights?

Hello - I'm from NY and have a flight booked to Vegas on Thursday morning on Virgin. It's Virgin's only Vegas-bound flight of the day. As some may know, they're forecasting a winter storm for Wed night into Thursday morning. I'm obviously worried about being able to get to the airport and about the flight being delayed or canceled. No snow is forecasted after Thursday am so it seems by Thursday afternoon and evening things should be ok.

Questions:
* If it's bad Thursday morning but will clear as the day progresses, is the Virgin flight likely to be cancelled or simply delayed a bunch of hours

* If it clears later in the day, do the afternoon / evening flights take off on time or do the morning flights then go and the later flights get delayed or canceled?

It's obviously much more expensive to book a flight now but I was thinking of also booking an evening flight on another airline and then taking the credit for whichever flight I don't need. Do you think that would make sense?

Any help or advice would be appreciated as well as experience on when flights actually get canceled vs how long they would be delayed. Trying to figure out the best course of action as I NEED to get out sometime on Thursday. Evening is fine, if necessary, but I can't be delayed till Friday. Obviously I'd rather not pay $500 for a $100 flight if I don't have to but I'll do what's necessary. Thanks for any tips.
Bravado is offline  
Old Jan 26, 2011, 3:56 am
  #2  
 
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I massive irregular operations event related to a snowstorm, the storm can be gone but sometimes it takes a few days to get things back on schedule due to aircraft and crew positioning to be able to operate. It depends on the airline and type of operation. For example if you were flying CO at EWR you may have a better chance of having flights operate after a storm as they have alot of aircraft and crews based there. This is also why airlines pre-cancel before the storm which seems to help return operations back to normal in a more timly manner.
buckeyefanflyer is offline  
Old Jan 26, 2011, 7:20 am
  #3  
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Welcome to Flyertalk.

If there's someplace you need to be, don't ever book the trip on an airline that only has one flight there a day.

There's no telling what they will do. Virgin may decide not to bring that plane in that morning or the night before, so there won't be any flight to put you on. They may delay it and you would be able to get out that day, but later. If any of their connecting flights through San Francisco are flying, they may put you on one of those if your flight is delayed or canceled.

Nobody can predict what tonight and tomorrow will be like until they actually start making schedule changes, until the storm actually gets here, until they know how the crews at JFK get the snow moved, etc.

It's too late now, but a better option if it was possible since you need to be there tomorrow would have been to take their travel waiver and go out this morning.
cordelli is offline  
Old Jan 26, 2011, 2:43 pm
  #4  
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If you don't know already, the direct flight from JFK to Vegas for tomorrow has already been canceled.
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