Tango

The passenger loads are very low for this Saturday evening and Sunday morning. I have known other airlines that in similar situations have their aircraft come down with mechanical problems. I would hate to miss the last flight out of the day for this reason. Is Alaska above this approach or should I worry?

fredmartens

Haven't had experience with AS canceling flights, but I've had a few where Horizon dumped a couple on me due to low loads. I think a fair amount of probablility has to do with where you're going and how many flights per day they offer. Cancellations due to no other reason that purely low loads are probably pretty rare though, IMHO.

EIPremier

Alaska definitely cancels flights for operational reasons. In the advent of a cancellation, I believe that AS is generally pretty good about re-booking passengers on the next available flight, even if its with another carrier.

At any rate, I'm sure they wouldn't cancel a flight purely because of a low passenger load. However, if there is a mechanical concern or problem with an aircraft and no spares are readily available, they may "find a replacement plane" by way of canceling a lightly booked flight assigned to the same aircraft-type. Likewise, if for some reason a flight crew is unavailable/incomplete, it stands to reason that emptier flights are more likely to be cancelled. Also, keep in mind that AS, like many other carriers, has prioritized certain flights that consist of more than one segment and/or often carry a large number of connecting passengers. They will do whatever they can not to delay or cancel these flights.

In short, the flights most likely to be cancelled are lightly booked, single-segment flights on routes with a high schedule frequency.

I'm sure flight ops will do their best to avoid cancelling the last flight of the day, but it has been known to happen before.

BigKing

My experience has been similar to those noted above, I have had flights cancelled many times when there is a light load but it has usually been on routes with frequent flights (LAX-SEA). My experience has been that it is very clearly done for yield management, I can't count how many times they have cancelled my flight or the flight before mine for a "mechanical" and by strange coincidence they have been able to accommodate the passengers from both flights on one plane.

AS Flyer

If a flight is cancelled at all because of loads it is because the airplane is needed on another flight. They don't simply cancel a flight just because the loads are light. Not even on SEA-LAX, where we have numerous flights. I can't begin to tell you the number of flights I've been on, throughout the system, where we've only had 10 or so passengers.

Superd1

I agree! I think Horizon will dump you if they come up short on planes and you are on a flight with low load and there is another flight that day. 4 other passengers and I were actually pulled off of a Horzion flight as the pilot was preparing their final preflight check. My biggest beef with this incident was that the gate agent came down and stated that the plane was grounded due to mechanical problems, they offered no compensation for the inconvenience. No mechanic showed up to work on said plane but 15 minutes later they started boarding it with another flight. If they ever pull this trick again I plan to immediatly notify the FAA that they are preparing to fly a grounded plane. I've looked up the phone number and keep it in my wallet. Lieing about the cancelation is not acceptable!!!
After a lot of complaining and several letters they eventually offered a $75 coupon for a future flight. I still feel this was no different than being bumped off a full flight and it warranted a free ticket.


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"A day without Points/Miles is like a day without SUNSHINE"

BigKing

And I can't begin to tell you how many times I have seen the same flight on the same day of the week get cancelled more than two weeks in a row, but if what you are saying is true then it is an incredible coincidence. And it is is not communicated at all by gate staff. But I don't think it really matters because ultimately it has the same effect on the stranded passnger whether it is because they need the plane somewhere else or because the load is light, and either way it is done for Alaska's convenience and because they have made a business decision that the inconvenience created to passengers and its potential costs are less than the cost of doing things like building more time into schedules or having a standby aircraft at an airport where they have a relatively high frequency of flights. I don't begrudge them doing this, I just don't like it when they are dishonest about it and claim three weeks in a row that a mechanical problem has befallen the aircraft on the same flight on a Thursday night.

AS Flyer

I don't doubt your story at all and I agree, no matter what the reason, that to cancel a flight is an inconvenience for the passenger in almost any case. I still stand by my statement that AS does not cancel flights simply because a flight is nearly empty. I recently worked a SEA-SFO-SEA trip. SEA-SFO was booked at about 10 people, SFO-SEA was booked at about 15 people. There was another SEA-SFO flight leaving less than an hour later and a return SFO-SEA flight leaving within an hour of our flight. They easily could have re-accomodated our passengers on these other flights with very, very little inconvenience at all yet they chose to run them. That is my most recent memory, being just about a week or two ago, yet I have many more just like it.

As everyone knows, AS has not enjoyed the industries best reputation for on time flights. As some of you may know, it has been a key focus for the company, to improve our on-time reliability. Part of that focus includes reducing cancellations. They will run these flights simply for that reason alone.

I know there are sometimes exceptions but I propose that they are extremely rare at Alaska, at least in the past few years.

AS Flyer

Incidentally, back to the original subject - what flights are you on Tango? I can check and see just exactly how light the loads are for you.

Tango

Flight 562 on the 24th. I am connecting onto CX that night. Thank you in advance.

AS Flyer

Tango -

It is pretty light, only booked at 3 in First and 35 in Coach right now. If it's any comfort to you, it's an LAX crew on that flight that has to get home, and there isn't another flight that night for them to deadhead on, plus that plane is required for the following morning's flight from LAX to SEA. Anyway - if it would make you feel better, there is a flight at 746pm that arrives LAX at 1020pm. It's not much earlier, if you arrive a little early they may let you on this flight. It's also booked fairly light. Flight number for this flight is 530.

Good luck and enjoy your trip!

BearX220

Is there any percentage for AS in taking aircraft that are scheduled to run in the afternoons/evenings Mexico-LAX-SEA as they arrive at LAX, consolidating the LAX-SEA loads onto fewer aircraft, and just parking the planes at LAX so they don't run light up to Seattle?

As one who for years has stood in T3/LAX and watched mystery cancellations/load consolidations crop up between 400p and 800p, I would swear from the evidence that's what's going on. There's multiple sectors published to SEA, some of them departing only 20 or 30 minutes apart, but I have hardly ever seen them all fly as scheduled.

I always make sure my wife knows exactly what AS flight number I am on before the doors close, and on LAX departures, six times out of ten I have to call her and say, you know, it's not the one we thought, I got consolidated/rolled over/rebooked onto some other one. It can't ALL be "mechanicals."

AS Flyer

I'm really not just trying to feed you all the "company Kool-Aid". I certainly don't drink much of it myself. But I very much believe that we don't cancel flights due to loads, as a rule. In regards to the LAX-SEA flights, coming from Mexico, often times those planes are continuing from SEA up to Alaska or turning around and heading back south once they get back to Seattle, and the very late ones are usually needed in Seattle for the flight they were scheduled to run the following morning. Further, these planes are all on a maintenance schedule that must be adhered to pretty strictly. By removing it from it's scheduled sequence it throws the plane "off track" and then has to be reshuffled to get to a maintenance base.

As regards the cancellations on the LAX-SEA flights, here is my take.... Many of them are MD80's. Let me preface this by saying that I feel completely safe on these planes, but the facts are that they tend to require maintenance more frequently than our 737's. Simply put, they break more. Now, breaking can mean anything from a very minor thing to something more major, but if it's not safe, they won't fly it. That is why I think that there are a larger number of cancellations on these flights than others. Just my take.

BCMike

Thanks for the answers ASFlyer. I haven't been at ease because I have a connecting flight from YVR to SEA on June 11th. Last time I looked it had 45 of the 128 seats or so taken. The flight from SEA to Las Vegas only has 1 seat left on it (that doesn't show as being reserved on the seat maps at the AS website). The return flight is also fully booked returning from Vegas to YVR (direct flight). I feel better about the connecting flight now though thanks to your replies .

BigKing

My experience exactly - LAX T3 from 4 to 8 seems to have more mysterious mechanicals than anyplace else on earth