Originally Posted by
songsc
As for monitoring inbound flight, it is pretty challenging when departing from AC's hub like YYZ, YVR, and YUL.
Originally Posted by
pitz
For flights late in the day, there's often legitimate staffing issues concerning check-in and security screening -- they 'could' post an hour delay, but that might have downstream impacts. Aircraft swaps are a possibility. An hour delay is quite minimal on an overseas flight.
OP asked specifically about overseas flights, with his example being CDG-YYZ.
In those cases, AC doesn't really have any logical defence. While a late inbound YUL-YYZ that's due to operate YYZ-YYC could, in theory, be rectified with a swap, at many overseas destinations, that's highly unlikely just not possible.
BOG is a great example. AC flies once a day from YYZ and that's it. If that plane leaves YYZ 2 hours late, there's a very good chance the return flight is going to be meaningfully delayed. And AC has a very good idea when that plane will arrive shortly after it has left YYZ, which is about 6 hours from BOG. There's no reason why they couldn't or shouldn't post a delay to save people hanging around the airport.
CDG is not quite as extreme a case since AC operates a few flights a day there, but aircraft swaps are still highly unlikely. And CDG would be one of the more of the overseas destinations. A lot of them are 1, 2, 3 flights a day.
As for issues with staffing at security etc, one could argue that logic in posting delays to the plane at the origin in Canada, but once it has departed, there's really no reason not to post the delay. Off the top of my head, the vast majority of AC's overseas flights would leave in the morning or early afternoon. So letting the pax know there's a 2-hour delay due to late inbound could save them some time otherwise wasted at the airport.