Is this a weather delay?
 

My roommate was on SAN-CLE-PHL, departing SAN at 11pm. Evidently, the crew for SAN-CLE, coming from Houston, were delayed due to weather. Consequently, they are sending the flight out 10:15am the next morning, turning his morning arrival in PHL to a 8:30pm arrival.

co.com says: "Status: Delayed - Awaiting arrival of crew"; they were handing out hotel vouchers at the airport. However, CO is refusing to reaccomodate him on a non-stop US flight that would get him there ~6 hours earlier calling the delay "weather related". A flight to IAH that could potentially get him there a couple of hours earlier is full.

Is that fair? SAN-CLE originates in SAN, not IAH; sure, IAH-SAN was weather delayed making a crew unavailable for SAN-CLE, but does that really make the SAN-CLE delay weather related?

Alas, he has no status; as a Gold, I would definitely expect better treatment were I flying... :td:

That is a weather delay. Just because you look outside and it looks nice doesn't mean no weather delay. You have to look at it from one simple view point. If there had been no weather would the crew have been available? The answer is yes so therefore it is a weather delay.

I'd consider him lucky that has a nobody he got a hotel voucher for a weather delay.

This is a fascinating grey area. Weather implies act of god, nothing airline could have done. A business plan that increases vulnerability to domino effects from weather in order to shave costs is a deliberate act.

There's an important engineering/business optimization technique called "integer programming", maybe various MBAs here have seen it. Airline crew scheduling is famously its best-known application, and airlines pay millions for such software. Vulnerability to cascading failures isn't part of the basic integer programming model, but for what they're paying, it should be part of the actual software delivered. In any case, one deliberately chooses one's risk exposure, and calling ripples through the system "weather related" overlooks this culpability.

Of course it's fair.

Obviously a flight crew is as necessary for an airplane to fly as are the wings and engines. If a flight cannot depart because the crew is not there due to weather, then the flight's delay is caused by weather. You mentioned no other factors at all for the delay.

Many times I have been delayed at an airport where the weather was clear and sunny, yet the incoming aircraft was delayed by weather elsewhere. Clearly, that is a weather-realted delay. Aircraft or crew - if they are not both readily available for an on-time departure - and the reason is weather, regardless of where it occurred - it's a weather delay.

What I find intersting here is the resheduled time change. Why couldn't the delayed flight leave at 1am or 2 am? Why 10am the next morning.

I think that flying IAH/SAN/CLE is probably very close to a pilots daily limit so any significant delay makes them unable to fly. They probably switched out crews and ended up using a crew that wasn't legal to fly until the next morning.

So while weather was a factor was it the cause? or Bad planning on CO's part?

For weather delays, technically CO is not required to provide hotel vouchers - and I do not believe they are required to reroute you on another carrier.

However, for mechanical delays they need to provide hotel and reroute on another airline.

I stopped flying AA a few years back when they cancelled a flight from FLL to DCA (after it was boarded) - using the argument that there was weather delays - but it fact the crew would exceed hours due to departure delay which was caused by the aircraft having mechnical problems on its earlier routing from MIA to SJU to FLL. In this case, AA just left everyone stranded at 10pm, using the weather argument. You had to find and pay for your own hotel (most hotels were booked and charging a premium). The best AA would do would be to book you on a AA flight out of MIA the next morning and AA required that you find and pay for your own transportation from FLL to MIA.

I wound up paying for my own hotel, and called AA reservations and made them rebook us the next day on CO FLL-CLE-DCA. AA had to buy us Y tickets on CO so I was able to call for instant upgrade. After that, I stick with CO. You might have to wait for the next CO flight due to weather, but at least CO is good about getting you a hotel.

I suppose it's somewhat related to the traveling salesperson problem (though much more complex)... I can only begin to imagine some of the constraints on the solutions: union rules, FAA work regulations, crew training, fudge factors, variables such as loads on the flight, equipment changes (though, CO probably has an easier time than other carriers with more varied fleets), etc.

My thoughts were along the bad planning lines: IAH-SAN clearly terminates in SAN. SAN-CLE clearly originates in SAN. If, hypothetically, the flight were IAH-SAN-CLE, creating a clear relationship between the flights, then sure, IAH-SAN delayed would have an obvious effect on SAN-CLE: equipment, crew, whatever.

However, in the average customer's mind, there is no relationship between the IAH-SAN and SAN-CLE flights. To me, if they don't have a crew available to staff the SAN-CLE flight when it's time for it to depart, that's a planning issue under their control. What if the SAN-CLE crew were deadheading on the IAH-SAN flight? Would that still make the delay weather related? What if they were deadheading on another carrier's flight?

Anyway, I can certainly understand the carrier's argument; I just think it's a little disingenuous. Yes, I agree that it was nice of CO to hand out hotel vouchers even when their interpretation of the delay did not require them to do so. (The roommate didn't need one -- just meant two extra roundtrips to the airport for me at inconvenient times.) He's on his way to PHL now, through IAH, so things are working their way back to normal. Learn something new every day... :)

In my opinion this is not a weather related issue. An airline could hire more crew, or have more available locally on standby. Instead, to reduce their costs, they take the risk of having realtime crew availability... or not.

The fact that they chose to take the risk of crew unavailabilty despite airplane availability would seem to me to incur an obligation on them. You are standing there with your ticket, the ground crew has serviced the plane and loaded your baggage, the gate crew is ready to board you... there are no delays either at your departing airport or at your target airport... where is the weather delay? This instead seems to be a a management issue.

Have MORE standing by locally?? Do you think airlines have reserves sitting all over the country waiting for a delay? The only reserves are in the HUBS. IAH, EWR & CLE. In most cases, the crew comes in with the plane. Or from their layover.

CO uses the rule -- what created the delay, and by good business sense if weather is involved that rule will take priority over anything else.

The good stuff is that the CO staff in SAN is excellent, caring and want to help at ALL times -- plus lets face it getting delayed in SAN is not a bad thing -- it could have been CLE or IAH or even EWR..!

Guys, think about this problem. What if the weather is on another CONTINENT? Let's say your plane originates in South America (or Europe) and is 6 hours late due to weather on that continent. Is that a weather delay? I so no way. There has to be a limit. A plane going to Tampa shouldn't be dependant on a flight from somewhere like costa rica. There has to be a limit to the weather excuse.

Weather excuse is totally overused...
 

As far as CO is concerned, everything is a weather delay.

This happened to me:

I VDB'ed for a flight and received my voucher. Reaccommodation was on a flight the next morning. CO agent said they'd cover hotel and meals. Cool. Just go to customer service to get the hotel/meal vouchers, the record is noted with the terms, VDB voucher is in my hand. The record was indeed noted.

I go to customer service, explain what happened and I need my vouchers. The first words out of the dude's mouth, "Hotel isn't covered in this situation because it was weather related." :rolleyes:

I was like, "Are you a freakin' robot with that weather excuse? I made my connection, I got in ontime, I volunteered my seat based on your overbooking, and it's noted in my record that you're supposed to issue hotel/food vouchers, if you'd bother to look."

All of a sudden he found the note and issued my hotel/meal vouchers.

Honestly they use the "weather" line for everything, and it doesn't mean jack.

And needlesss to say this happened at EWR. :D

I know no particulars about that flight, but the crew probably ran out of time. We have duty day limitations set by the FAA and our labor contracts, and cannot fly beyond them. The rescheduled time probably reflected the bare minimum FAA crew rest requirements.

hehe...not a bad idea, though. Personally I wouldn't mind hanging out in Aruba for a few weeks waiting for another crew to go illegal. ;-) Think we ought to suggest this to the union?

No, I don't think there are standbys, and hence the situation. Yet businesses deal every day with the situation that certain employees may be out, and still have to serve customers without having the opportunity to play a 'weather delay' card.

Not the airline business.

No, but the point is that not having the reserves was a concious decision by the airline (and probably a good one). However, if that decision causes a flight originating locally to be delayed because of lack of crew (for whatever the reason), don't blame the weather!

If the crew driving to the airport from their hotel are delayed due to a wreck on the freeway, that's another situation outside of the airline's control and hence theoretically under the same force majeure clause in the contract of carriage. But, you would expect a bit more in the way of accomodation from the carrier in that case, right? How's it any different?

If a freak flood swamps my house, should I blame only myself for making the concious decision to NOT built a dike around it - even though doing so wouldn't be reasonable (or rational or financially sound)?

If you live on a flood plane..yes :D. ( I know you said freak accident)

I think what most have said here is that while weather contributed to the delay its hard to say that was 100% of the reasons there was a delay. Nobody expects CO to have back-up at every location. However, when situations fall apart you then can't just point the finger and blame the weather. Flying out IAH bad weather almost has to be expected a great deal of the time so how CO handles known variables is the issue. We are not talking freak snowstorm of 10 ft or hurricane or the like but the kind of thing that happens two or three times a week at IAH in the summer.

Very true...so it's probably worth pointing out that CO's completion factors during unfavorable weather are typically very high when compared to other carriers. Late stinks, but not making it at all is even stinkier. ;) All things considered, we run a very efficient operation by comparison - and though there are 'known' variables, they are about as accurately predictable as the weather report on the nightly news. It's tough to know just which way the wind is going to blow until it actually does...

I agree that CO is better then most on these issues. Don't even get me started on US...

Some of this maybe a PR issue. people who trave a great deal uderstand the domino effect that weather can have on operations way down the line. Other think the airline is just ducking blame. There should be some middle ground.

Yes...and it's frustrating. I can't tell you how many passengers (even high mile FF's) have told me to my face that we were lying about weather being the cause. They see the current weather reports and don't buy it when we tell them it's weather - ignoring the fact that our airplane left EWR 12 hours ago when the weather was much different, and that that same plane had to land in EWR from somewhere else however many hours earlier.

I don't know about you guys, but I find it a bit offensive to be called a liar! I wish I could take those folks into an ATC tower or our ops center on bad weather days...just observe for a few hours how it all works, the logistics involved. They'd get it pretty quickly!

This would be easy to solve by jus posting the original flights for the plane from the poit of departure to the point its at now. frankly in this day and age with everything online I think airlines could always be better at communictaion with cusotmers.

the phrase weather or atc delay without further explanation is always going to be suspect ona perfect weather day in SAN.