Originally Posted by
Rock72
this is probably old news to everyone here but last thursday i had to fly up to SF from LA. My flight was supposed to leave at 8:50am so I got into my car at 8:00 when the phone rang. It was Southwest calling me to tell me that my flight is delayed until 9:40am.
Originally Posted by
Rock72
Anyway, this is the first time WN really annoyed me. Last night when I flew back home, it was a little annoying because my 8pm flight was full and the 7pm flight was not so I asked to switch over to 7pm but as expected they said no. I even explained that since 8pm was full there is a chance that they would have to ask for volunteers and give up travel vouchers, etc. but it didn't work. This argument actually has worked for me a few times in the past but no such luck this time. Oh well, that's ok though.
Southwest chose to start flying into SFO after not doing so for a very long time. It's convenient, and incredibly frustrating.
The phone message probably says "show up on time anyways", but I've never listened past the word "delayed". I'm the "show up early" type, so I've spent probably around 20 hours watching and learning about SFO delays in my local airport.
Short version: Never show up late for a flight to SFO. Flights to SFO are usually delayed by SFO air traffic control calling your airport and saying "keep that plane on the ground", and they can (and often do) evaporate at any time. I don't know how delays work typically, but for destination SFO, the earlier you show up, the earlier you can rebook your flight when they delay or cancel it. Once a flight is delayed, it seems more likely to leave on time or be canceled than it is to be delayed.
Long version: I've been flying to SF nearly every week for the past 4 months. For most of those weeks, some or all morning flights to SF were delayed due to "air traffic control". I asked enough people over time to figure out what's up. Whenever it's foggy in San Francisco (every morning), the "international" airport is reduced to using a single runway. Whenever there's international flights arriving in San Francisco (every morning), the "local" flights are held at the departing airport until there's a window for them to land when they arrive. (Apparently this has to do with cross-ocean flights and fuel priority.) I think the theory is that it's better (cheaper, safer) to hold a flight for an indeterminate period of time at a departing airport than to have it circling in the air. However the local airport seems to be in constant communication with SFO traffic control, and several times I've been boarded on a plane on time and then we waited for between 5 and 30 minutes for the "go ahead" from SFO. (Once we barely made it off the gate, there was someone in the bathroom and if they'd been a minute longer we would have lost our "go ahead" and been stuck waiting for who knows how long.)