Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
"Wheels UP" is just some term used for when the wheels are actually off the ground. It's not necessarily just used as an indication of FLOW control INTO an airport....it's often used OUT of an airport as well.
At airports like JFK in rush hour, you never know when you will be up. The only thing preventing you from taking off is the long lines of a/c in front of you. Most of the flights are to airports where there are not flow-control issues. The "wheels up" time isn't known because you're sitting in a line, but once you reach the active runway it is rare that ATC will prevent you from departing because of flow control.
Now take an AE flight, SDF-ORD ... or more recently a TPA-ORD I did on mainline AA. I look at
www.fly.faa.gov in the terminal and see a "ground hold" for flow control at ORD.
We board a/c. Sure enough, we push back and are then advised we'd be waiting due to flow control and that we have been given a wheel's up time of 7:20pm. It's only 6:30pm (delayed 4:30pm departure), so we taxi over to a tarmac area by the active and wait. Flow control allowed us to proceed a few minutes early, so we made the final part of the taxi to the active runway and off we went.
When the plane boarded at the gate, I'd think there would be a 'wheels up departure time' in the system. I knew we'd have a flow control delay before I even boarded, even though we had no departure traffic in front of us. There were no lines getting out of TPA -- as there would be at JFK at that time in the evening -- but there were flow control issues for ORD which would not allow us to depart TPA despite wide open active runways with an occassional departure/arrival.
I don't experience this flying into DFW often, but it happens when trying to get to ORD, LGA, PHL, and EWR on a somewhat regular basis. Doesn't matter what airline either -- everyone is subject to flow control.
SDF_Traveler
P.S. I actually do recall one flight ex-JFK that was subject to a flow control delay. I had arrived from FCO, cleared Customs/Immigrations and made my connecting flight, JFK-CVG, which pushed back on-time. Despite an on-time pushback, we weren't going anywhere. CVG was on a flow-control ground-stop because President Bush visited Ohio and messed up operations at CVG. We took a position on the tarmac and waited about an hour for ATC flow-control to release us to CVG. Fortunately JFK ground/ATC allowed us to take a position where we were able to cut the "rush-hour" line for departure once the release was given.