bayhouse

I understand that SFO is designed to operate priorly only in sunny conditions (despite the fact that its located in the SF Bay Area and is subject to the elements quite often). I also understand that delays early in the day can trigger system-wide delays for the rest of the day.

These two facts aside, why is it that VX totally shafts the short-haul (SFO-SAN/LAX/LAS) passengers during delays? I arrived at SFO on a different flight (which is a story for another post) to catch a SFO-SAN flight in the evening. The SFO-SAN flight was posted as "on time" -- both on the VX website and external sites like FlightAware -- throughout the entire day. Around 6:40pm, roughly 90 minutes before scheduled departure, I got a notices that my flight was moved to 11:45pm or 12:20am. The inconsistency isn't important; the fact that they announce a 4+ hour delay at the last minute is unacceptable. Did VX and/or SFO truly not think this flight was delayed until the last minute, despite seeing the entire airport backlogged with weather delays caused by poor infrastructure?

I also considered rebooking to a SFO-LAX flight, but noticed that it wouldn't be viable because they decided to give up on those flights. Three SFO-LAX flights this afternoon and evening were originally scheduled to depart between 4pm and 8pm, yet were rescheduled for 11:25pm, 11:35pm, and 11:45pm, respectively. ...!

Does VX have trouble standing up for itself when negotiating IROPS slots with SFO? Does VX or SFO assume that anyone flying short haul must not have meaningful commitments throughout the day? What gives?!

I love VX (and NorCal as a whole), but this sort of "problem solving" during IRPOS is totally absurd. Can anyone shed light on this?

gooseman13

Not sure where to start here, I'll try to go down the list of challenges in sort of a systemic way.

Challenge that affect all the airlines: Weather conditions that lead to a decrease in the amount of traffic the airport can handle, leading to inbound traffic delays. In general, actually, SFO has gotten better than before here. Normal operations have aircraft landing to the west on runways 28L and 28R simulatenously. In the past, when aircraft were using instrument approaches to land (essentially any day with low overcast cloud cover), the lack of a "safe distance" between runways precluded two aircraft from landing at the same time. A number of recent changes have been implemented that has improved this.

However, on a heavy rain and wind day, which I'm assuming yesterday was, it is often the case that a reverse runway configuration is neccessary, and aircraft will land to the south on Rwy 19L/19R. This configuration always reduces traffic and leads to significant delays. The FAA triggers a ground delay program. This is a fun site to bookmark if you travel a lot [http://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/]. At the current moment, SFO is in one of these programs (actually quite a bad one, with average delays of 210 minutes per inbound flight). Basically FAA Air Traffic Control maps out the amount of traffic it can handle, then assigns every inbound flight scheduled a time that it can depart for SFO such that the flight will arrive in a time that the airport can handle the traffic.

Challenge to Virgin America that VX has little control over: Each individual flight is assigned one of these time slots, but essentially the airline "owns" all of the time slots for its flights and can switch things around as they please. The FAA doesn't care as long as only one flight is arriving in each time slot. United has the largest operation, and thus most time slots. What UA often does is cancel flights en masse, particularly their express operation, and use those freed up slots to lessen delays on mainline flights. In fact, yesterday, UA's two afternoon flights to SAN, both on Skywest, were flat out cancelled. So if you were on that 3:46pm flight, the earliest UA would have gotten you out would have been 10:27 pm...assuming they had seats on that flight. As a traveler this can be good and bad, if you are on a premium type route, say SFO to the east coast, they have more flexibility to ensure your flight is on time. Of course conversely, if you are on an express flight (and I believe UA has the largest % of express flights of all airlines), you have an increased chance that your flight will be flat out cancelled.

Other factors: Keep in mind that in this situations, there are passengers who are going to get screwed. So the airline has to decide, ok who do we screw the least. Do we delay the flight to New York, which has 25 passengers connecting to El Al to Tel Aviv, and have them be stuck in New York for at least 24 hours, plus require a complicated rebooking process, or do we delay the flight to San Diego, that has no connections? Same might be said for the aircraft itself. A redeye to Boston may turn right back to San Francisco in the morning, and a four hour delay on that redeye may delay every flight scheduled the next day on that plane for four hours, whereas the plane to San Diego eventually spends 8hrs overnight in SAN...so getting there four hours late will have minimal effect on the next days operation.

In terms of the "last minute" delay notification, while I might disagree it's last minute, certainly an earlier notification would help in a passenger planning out their day. There could be legitimate reasons for this: the crew operating the flight ends up being 4 hours delayed on their previous flight instead of 3 hours, and this change means they do not have enough allowable time in their duty day to work the flight - as a result a new crew needs to be found for the flight.

On the other hand, there could be a lamer reasons for the delay posting, like the operation is such a mess that the airline simply doesn't have the manpower to get more than two hours ahead of the curve on looking at and delaying individual flights. I've seen this happen before, and is certainly on the airline to improve if that's the case.

My tips:
Fly in the morning wherever possible. First flights of the morning are rarely delayed as a result of weather.
Have a backup. Depending on when you book your travel, it never hurts to book Southwest flight out of SJC or OAK as a backup. Southwest can be cancelled with no penalty, and if you use points, their tickets are completely refundable.
Keep an eye on other airlines on days like this. If you find that your particular flight is always getting delayed four hours, but United has a flight at the same time to the same place that's always on time, maybe consider switching.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the situation.

bayhouse

Thanks for the very detailed answer. It all makes sense.
The only question that remains is why they fail to announce delays until the last minute, despite having revised flight plans filed hours before. This practice isn't unique to VX though, so I just need to accept it and move on.

gooseman13

Only inbound flights are delayed by air traffic control, so it is possible that any particular flight that day going out may be scheduled on an aircraft that was at the airport hours before.

My recommendation is to prepare (mentally) for the worst and hope for the best.

I would also write a brief communication to the airline "I was on this flight last week, it was delayed 5 hours. I understand the delay, however it would be helpful for planning purposes if more than 90 minutes of notice was given before the flight goes from on-time to 5 hours delayed."

I think one area that any particular airline can set itself apart is how it communicates with its customers.

VegasGambler

I had a good experience with a weather-related delay yesterday...

Flying LAS-SFO on VX 909. Scheduled for 4pm; I got an alert saying it was delayed until 4:40. I did not really believe it was going to leave at 4:40. I decided to show up at the airport on time for a 4pm departure anyway, since I did not know when the plane would actually leave, I did not feel like re-arranging my transportation to the airport, and I have been planning to check out the Amex lounge in LAS anyway.

When I got to LAS I checked the monitor and noticed that VX 913 (LAS-SFO, scheduled for 2:40) was showing a delay until... 4pm. I was already checked in for 909 but, before heading through security, I stopped by the VX ticket desk and asked if they could get me on 913. She told me that there were currently F seats available, printed me a standby boarding pass for F, and told me that they would clear standy right after they started boarding, and if there was an F seat available I could get it. If there was a lower-class seat I'd have the choice of taking it or waiting and taking 909 -- my seat on 909 would remain confirmed unless I got on 913. No charge, no matter what I did.

I got to the gate, and they did standby while they were boarding A group / pre-board. There was an F seat available so I took it. So I departed at my originally scheduled time, in the fare class I paid for, albeit on a flight with a different number. All I lost was my priority boarding, but I still managed two scotches before takeoff and there was enough space in the overhead bin for both my carry-on and my laptop bag (which did not fit in front of the seat in front of me, since since that space was split in 2 by a bar down the middle).

I also noticed that the plane left with one vacant F seat, and I think there were vacant MC seats as well. I was the only person called for standby. I wonder how many 909 passengers in F waited at the airport (909 did not end up leaving until 6 -- a 2 hr delay) without realizing that they could have asked to be put on 913 instead? There were some confused passengers who tried to board 913 with their 909 boarding passes (the gate was the same)

Overall -- there is nothing that VX can do about delays -- SFO is a poorly-designed airport and there is bad weather all the time -- but they can give good service, and do whatever's possible to mitigate the situation, which they did, and got me to my destination more-or-less on time. I am pretty happy with the whole experience.