Do low-cost airlines often cancel flights?
 

How often do low-cost airlines not only delay, reschedule but simply cancel your flight due to weather or other act of god, low bookings or something?

What are the rules and regulations regarding this? In EU, Asia, North- and Latin-America?

Insurance?

Airasia cancelled flight from pusan to narita and said plane broken sorry..no compensation no nothing. Even though I am sure they are member of international convention I can't remember what the law was.

EU has EU261.

Some LCC's in EU have better on time performance than legacy carriers.

I've done over 300 flights with EU low cost carriers in four years. Only three were significantly delayed, all by less than an hour.

Jetstar is good!
 

I think Jetstar provides good service and seldoms delay flights; it only requires the full name of passenger to make a booking, there is an option to choose offline payment to avoid credit card convenience fee which is unavoidable at other low cost airlines, there is even a price beat guarantee where we will get 10% off the price off from the other carrier if we get the tickets from Jetstar. The list goes on and on...I think Jetstar is really worth it! :)

Most low costs don't like cancelling flights because of the knock-on effects - that plane that is going from A to B may then fly B to C then C to D before flying back to A - possibly by yet another airport.

European LCC don't cancel flights more than legacy carriers.
Plus their on time performances are at the top.

never had problems with low cost. Usually problems are with the "major" carriers

As others said, don't think it worse than traditional carriers - potentially better. The big issue is around recovery. I had a flight cancelled on easyJet to Morocco a few years back during the busy holiday season due to weather at Gatwick. Problem was because they don't fly many flights there, next available seat was 2 weeks away. I had to cancel the trip entirely. I think that if I had been on a legacy carrier, the recovery options would have been better and I would have been able to make it down to Morocco for at least some of my trip.

Greg

That's the one saving grace...the business model might depend of flying the plane so much that there's a cascade effect. In the U.S., for example, Spirit is notorious for having tickets that aren't good elsewhere and generally being a bad place to be when things go wrong, but its business model counts in part of trying to cram in another flight per plane per day vs. what a legacy might demand. So even if they don't care much about you, it's costing THEM.

Grand Air in the Philippines also used to be really bad about economic cancellations. Their liability limits under Philippine law at the time were 150 pesos ($3-4), so that was hardly a deterrent.

Well I can only really speak from the Australian and Asia perspective, but in my experience most low cost carriers don't really cancel their flights all that much. Delays may be common; but, and let me cross my fingers, so far none of my flights have personally been cancelled.

When I worked as a travel agent, the only airline that cancelled enough to earn a reputation for itself was Tiger Airways.

But I think you should be fine. But again, this is only from the Australian and Asia perspective (I have flown Air Asia and many other budget airlines like Cebu Pacific etc).

Hope this helps!

Happy traveling!

Not sure about the cancellations, but in terms of being on-time, most of the budget airlines outperform the traditional carriers. http://www.flightontime.info/latest/latest.html

yes, good call englisha

I have flown with Allegiant and they have a big reputation for cancelling flights.

"Reputation" - do you have any proof of that?