Originally Posted by
Troubler
So I have in the back of my head that Swoop has a way higher likelihood of being severely delayed/cancelled because it’s ULCC. Am I just making stuff up? I thought I read that somewhere.
Thinking of booking a trip to Vegas out of Abbotsford purely for the convenience of flying out of Abbotsford. I just don’t want to run a higher risk of missing the trip.
When weather is good, the risks are comparable with other airlines, when the weather turns bad they have little flexibility to free up aircraft to deal with stacking delays due to the high number of hours each aircraft flies and the lack of spare aircraft. Recovery options are also limited, so it is worth having a credit card that covers flight cancellation. I think on the WestJet analysts call completion rate so far was quoted as in the high 90s (so 1 in 20 or less chance of a cancellation), but OTP is still being worked on, it is more like Encore was in it’s first operational year than WestJet mainline, but Encore improved to the point that it is now often one of the best regional airlines in the world for OTP.
They are stringent on not doing anything outside of the tariff for events out of their control due to tight cost constraints and unless you do everything online, it is painful to deal with the call centre as it is also severely constrained due to the cost model. Not really any different than other ULCC airlines such as Ryanair and Spirit Airlines.