justhere

One could argue that common sense is being used by ascribing all delay minutes to the applicable codes. Meaning, as long as it's done correctly, there's a record of everything that went into the delay. If you go with only the last reason, as some posters are suggesting, then what happens when you have a 2 hour MX delay and when you are finally ready to push back, there's a ground stop for either WX or ATC for 15 minutes and the crew times out? Now you allow the airline to say "sorry cancellation was due to ground stop" and your saying "what about the 2 hours MX delay?". At least having all the delay minutes coded correctly and then determining if the overriding factor was a delay in a controllable or non-controllable situation gives a complete picture of what happened. And I believe that's really the intent of the current system, otherwise you don't get to the root causes of the delays.

In other words, it cuts both ways and you have to take the good with the bad under the current system. I suppose it would be nice if the DOT said something like 51% of the delay has to be non-controllable and then also required airlines to post all the delay codes with their minutes for complete transparency. But then you'll have people going "it was 8 minutes MX, not 7. How dare they not give me a hotel overnight".

bswiz

Well, to close this out... I got a call from someone in AA customer relations today. She insisted everything they have on record shows my flight was cancelled due to weather. I again explained what we were told on the flight and how there seemed to be a disconnect there. I got a "well, sometimes there are multiple factors that go into a cancellation...." answer, and in the end she offered up 7500 miles, which she said would be the standard compensation for a 4 hour maintenance delay. Plus they are supposed to refund the cost of the unused DFW-AUS leg which I'm guessing won't be much.

So 7500 miles and a few bucks back. Not great by any means but better than nothing, I suppose.

KansasMike

While the example below specifically pertains to United, it documents the rather frequent practice of airlines lying about weather. In the case below, I tracked the plane and it did not encounter any weather during that day.

MSE Creative Consulting Blog: The Airline Lie