wbowles

I had a US Airways flight this morning from DCA to MCO, the first one of 8 scheduled today at 7:35 AM. I checked in online and received my BP at 5:26 PM yesterday, a few minutes later at 5:54 they phoned and emailed in both cases telling me my flight was cancelled "because of runway conditions at the destination airport". This is false, there are no runway conditions present or forecast in Orlando. There are winter weather problems here in DC, but I note that the 8:30 AM flight left OK, a bit late, and dozens of other flights including US/AA left DCA fine between 7:00 and 8:00 this morning. It seems other than the stupid error of destination conditions they just lied, it's not the runway but just clearing the decks of some volume. They had nothing reasonable to offer at all to make the trip possible although US agent on phone tried.
Questions for experts here:
1. Do I have any recourse other than refund (to my company), causing me to miss my weekend home?
2. What strategy should one take in weather cases? I though the early flight was safer, as no cascading delays of aircraft, crews and deicing, they should have been caught up overnight. Is choosing a later flight generally safer following a bad weather day?
Thanks for suggestions!
W

DrBillAtwood

You are probably right that the reason was not accurate, but remember that runway conditions include other factors besides weather. I had a huge delay at DFW because of an earthquake (tremor) at the airport. They had to visually inspect the runways before they could be used again. It resulted in a significant delay because the airport could only use each of the runways after inspection.

wbowles

You're right that runway conditions could be other than weather, but I checked at the destination Orlando, all incoming flights normal.

fly747first

Write to AA and threaten to report them to the Department of Transportation. That may get you some "goodwill" miles.

dml105

Was your flight actually canceled? (It looks like it was.)

My guess is that the plane couldn't get to DCA to take you to MCO. Is your complaint that they said runway problems at your destination, as opposed to runway problems at your origination?

GalleyWench

It was probably runway conditions at DCA last night that caused the DCA originating airplane to cancel. It's not necessarily the destination airport.

jayer

Our crew out of DFW late last night came in from DCA. Very young FA mentioned how bad DCA was and that very limited flights had flown because of the weather.

Often1

Can almost guarantee that it was DCA conditions and thus should have said, "runway conditions for inbound aircraft". But, maybe all this means is that carriers should stop trying to give reasons as it doesn't really matter why and people dissect disembodied computer voices.

DOT isn't going to give a hoot that somebody hit the wrong button in the middle of massive IROPS.

justhere

Never really understood why people just assume that a company lied. More often than not that's said with either the benefit of hindsight or a lack of understanding.

If US called you at 5:54 PM the day before your flight that likely means that the plane that was scheduled to take you to MCO the next day hadn't arrived at DCA yet. So the statement about runway conditions at the destination airport was most likely referring to DCA as the destination of the incoming flight.

Certainly understandable how that would be confusing and could have been made much clearer by US but given the circumstances and conditions that explanation would make the most sense (and isn't a lie).

CHOPCHOP767

I'm on the shuttle at least a couple of times of week, and whenever there's suspected weather conditions at DCA, I've noticed that US is actually pretty good about proactive noticifications as theyre cancelling flights to relieve congestion at DCA. So, in that respect, I can't complain about US. As to the second question, this winter has been tough and I'll take anything I can to get back and forth. Flexibility is the key. I haven't been able to discern a pattern with US at DCA. With the notification though, it seems like OP had a lot of time to secure alternate routing and I'm wondering if non-stop was the OP's exclusive criterion for 'reasonable' re-routing. I'm pretty certain many here have taken alternate itineraries which were far from direct to get home. A few months back, I went to LAX to get back to BOS due to weather in ORD. Not ideal, but I did make it home.

Indelaware

Don't waste the government's time and don't threaten to do so either. And don't lust over "'goodwill' miles" -- that will only make you seem petty.

What does it matter why the flight was cancelled? It was cancelled. Airlines may cancel flights for any reason. Their only responsibility is either to provide alternative transportation or make a refund.

steve64

I'll take a wild guess and say that the US system uses numeric codes for the "cancellation reason" and someone input the wrong code ... perhaps only one digit off differentiates between "departure" vs "arrival" runway conditions.

I highly doubt the airline was lying to you.
Bottom line is your flight was cancelled for weather and they coded it as such.

In general, your philosophy is correct. But airlines are complicated machines to keep running so anything can happen.
Your flight may have been cancelled simply because the sked had to be thinned out to ease the delays. The airport had already been hit with the weather so the thinning out had to occur through out the day including the 1st round of departures.

But more common is the domino effect. Many aircraft and crew are out of place from the previous day's operation. The airline simply doesn't "catch up overnight". If the following day was a perfect weather day (not the case here) then the evening operation could be more "caught up" than the morning, but there'd still be some residual effects typically until the next day.
And it usually isn't "catching up". With a major schedule disruption, it's more like a total re-work of who's gonna flight what plane where.

And even minor disruptions from the day before can affect morning flights. Let's say last night didn't have any cancellations, the operation was just running several hours behind sked. The next morning there will be delays for crew rest. At a major hub, some of those early flights can be "re-crewed", but in there could be so many flights affected that some will have to start the next day delayed.

teevee

sure it may not make a difference to some why an airline cancelled a flight, but sometimes they lie about the reason when it is nothing more than a $$$ decision for them, as in when a flight is not full enough.

used to happen more often years back, and AA was most notorious for this. happened to me several times on MIA-SJU flights. they ALWAYS said it was because of mechanical reasons. a quick look at their available seats always revealed a very empty plane...

Doc Savage

If there are other flights, why didn't you hop on them so you wouldn't miss your weekend home? Very unclear.

dml105

I don't know why this canard gets perpetuated. Flights do not get canceled because of poor loads. The kind of havoc to the airline that would cause is immense. That empty plane needs to be somewhere too! That flight MIA-SJU that was cancelled then affected the SJU-MIA flight full of people (and cargo) that needed to get to Miami and beyond.

Besides that, if you saw that the seat map was light after they canceled your flight, it could easily be because many people were already removed from that flight and rerouted around the cancellation.

#petpeeve.