ethernal

While regional will always be the first to cancel (simply as a matter of passengers per unit of runway / ATC space when those are the limiting factor especially when combined with lower crosswind, etc thresholds), Delta started making regional ops a priority under the goal of what they call "brand perfect" days - no mainline or Delta-branded regional cancellations. In 2018, Delta had 135 "brand perfect" days (no regional cancels) compared to 243 mainline "no cancel" days.

Again, I get that people get frustrated with rolling delays and that Delta still cancels flights. But I'm just not going to hear it. I have plenty of gripes about Delta (21 C+ seats on a 737-900? Really?), but this is one place that Delta just really blows out its competitors is on completion rate. Even as far back as 2015 (and Delta has gotten significantly better since then), American's COO said that this is one place Delta is so far ahead of everyone else that it will take a long time to catch up. Every airline has rolling delays during WX. The difference is that Delta won't - after 12 hours of rolling delays - end up cancelling the flight. Whereas on United and American they will do 12 hours of rolling delays and then cancel. Which one do you prefer?

Some of this is my proactive avoidance of traveling during/through hubs with significant WX events, but I have flown well over 1000 segments on Delta. I have never experienced a cancellation on Delta. I have been on dozens of flights where Delta swapped out a plane because an inbound was delayed by 4+ hours where another airline may have cancelled. I have been on at least five flights where my original plane was not going to fly (due to MX or crew timeout) and Delta flew a 99xx rescue flight out - some of them which took off before the inbound flight with a known crew timeout issue even took off. I have been on a flight with a MX issue where Delta flew an empty 99xx flight with a critical part to an outstation, got it repaired, and got the flight out with only a 3 hour delay. I have been on two flights coming back TATL where Delta did a technical stop in Reykjavik and JFK to pick up fresh crew when the original crew was going to timeout. I have been on a few flights with long rolling delays - but they eventually took off. These are all instances where other airlines would have had a high likelihood of cancellation.

There's a lot of things to complain about, but Delta's completion factor is not one of them.

sonkie23

As someone who needed to get out of Denver in early April during the blizzard that never really transpired, had I not been on Delta there is no chance I would have made it home. Delta was literally the only airline flying that day. Everyone else preemptively canceled and the weather wound up being pretty unremarkable and nothing that Denver can't handle.

I may get stuck with some super incompetent phone reps and gate agents from time to time but if I know I need to get home, I'd rather be booked on Delta.

DiverDave

No, I say that right up until the alternative is to rent a car and drive from ATL to HSV.

Well, that's nice anecdata as they say here. Lucky for you (for example) that you weren't trying to fly Delta during the August 2016 meltdown.

When I'm traveling for work and a flight is cancelled, my company's TA will rebook me onto another airline.

apodo77

ethernal

95% of the time you see the twelve hour rolling delays it's because of a significant WX event. If you're close and WX is questionable your solution should always be to skip the flight and drive. That's just common sense. I fortunately very rarely fly out of ATL hyper-short haul (e.g., to HSV) but on the other direction coming home, I've more than once taken a flight to, e.g., CLT and driven to Atlanta rather than risk significant WX (ice storm or massive lines of thunderstorms). That's just traveling smart.

An airline can't control the weather and you have to take a bit of control there as a smart traveler. That said, even there, Delta does better than most with its weather forecasting (DL 431 racing to beat a hurricane out of Peurto Rico long after all other flights had turned around being the famous example of that, but @sonkie23's example is probably the more day-to-day one that many of us experience.

I will complain a lot about Delta - their SkyMiles redemption rates, the lack of C+ seats, and so on.. but this is one place where the grass truly isn't greener on the other side. Good luck finding an airline anywhere in the world that does what Delta does (when adjusting for WX/routes) terms with regards to completion factor. You won't find one.

ethernal

GRALISTAIR

I love padding. I would rather arrive 30 minutes early than 30 minutes late. I just love the operational reliability of Delta

ethernal

It's anecdotal, but backed up by every DOT report. Doesn't matter whether you look at marketing carrier or mainline only. The difference isn't trivial.

Here's two random months (I just picked the most recent report and then September of last year - I did not look at any others so these are not cherry-picked numbers).

You will see that network-wide (including regionals), United cancels about 3 times more flights than Delta does. American cancels 8-10 times as many. While my data is "anecdotal", I have experienced cancellations on American and United on far fewer flights. Over the past three years I experienced 3 cancellations on American on only 50 or so flights. Anecdotal or not, I will take 0 cancellations out of 1000 segments over 2 cancellations out of 50 segments. Another poster mentioned that the "obsession" with on-time performance is silly, but I no longer fly American for this reason (plus the increasing penetration of the bad slimline seats with barely 30" pitch).

For goodness sake, Delta generally outperforms HAWAIIAN AIR - an airline with a simple route network with the majority of it on intra-island hops in generally good weather, uncontested airspace, and empty airports.

Sept 2018


Feb 2019

ijgordon

Or during the April 2017 meltdown. One of the worst, most stressful travel experiences of my lifetime, trying to get to my OWN bachelor party in LAS .
DL mostly made up for it (reimbursed the excess cost we incurred to rebook on another airline at the last minute, but we were still 24 hours delayed on a 4-day trip). But it still stings a little. That said, their more recent track record (and AA going down the drain on many fronts) has pulled me back over to DL for the past ~18 months.

strickerj

defrosted

The data posted above speaks for itself, but I will add my anecdotal evidence here as well. I have sat and watched other airlines employees (Southwest, United and American) walk up to the gate and try to get on Delta flights because Delta was the only airline that hadn't completely canceled every flight that day. If the weather that day was such a lost cause people "in the know" wouldn't have bothered. Yet instead they lined up at Delta.

When push comes to shove Delta trys the hardest to get you there.

Unless driving is an option, I would take long delays over cancellations 99% of the time.

ethernal

This. Cancellations are easy and cheap (especially domestically). You just rebook them on another flight. Maybe some lost revenue opportunity from selling those seats that get taken up. Maybe a couple of vouchers if it is an MX cancel. But for the most part, it's cheap.

It's not cheap to fly out empty rescue flights. It's not cheap to do technical stops to pick up fresh crew. It's not cheap to ship a part in an empty plane to a distant outstation. It's not cheap to have enough extra standby aircraft and crew to deal with unexpected operations. It's not cheap to have a 767 engine starter at every station that Delta flies those aircraft to. Even for those criticizing schedule padding, it's not cheap to pad a schedule. It is a huge operational headache (which often leads to cost) to have crews or planes out of position which is a risk when you don't proactively cancel flights due to WX. Oh, and not cancelling? It kills your on-time stats because cancels don't hurt your on-time percentage and usually cancels would otherwise be significant cascading delays. Delta manages to have pretty good on-time performance and industry leading completion factors.

Delta has taken a stand and made it clear that they are willing to do whatever it takes - regardless of the cost - to get you there from point A to point B. United has started to make steps to that same commitment - at least with mainline - but hasn't reached the same degree of maturity or experience Delta has. American and pretty much every other major airliner (US and elsewhere)? They just cancel and deal with the customer consequences.

As a comparison point.. how many times have you seen an Air France or KLM flight operate a Delta flight? It pretty much never happens. How many times have you seen Delta bail out KLM or Air France and operate one of their legs because they have some issue? All the time.

I'll go back to my regularly scheduled "complaining about Delta" posts shortly.. but I for one am thankful that I can rely on Delta to get me from point A to point B - even if sometimes I'm a bit delayed. When it comes to mainline flights, I am literally 15-20x more likely to have a cancelled American flight than Delta. That is not trivial and it matters.

BenA

ethernal

Perhaps it is a bit of gaming, but even that is not as simple of a "game" as it seems. The fact that Delta's dynamic scheduling system can handle this (that plane was scheduled to fly out of ATL the next morning I'm sure, and the crew may have needed to be there too..) is non-trivial. I am 99% sure that American's systems would melt down at that and result in cascading residual issues the next day because it seems to choke up even on a good day.

The fact that despite the occasional 12 hour posted delay Delta still has pretty good ontime rates (including average arrival delay which considers the long tail) tells you that this is not a super common occurrence.

Lastly - perhaps those of us with status don't appreciate this fact - but cancellations can be very, very bad. I am guarantee you that person in Basic Economy with no status was glad that the flight persisted. Otherwise they may not be able to get rebooked to their final destination for a long time - far longer than the next morning would have been.

estedman

Yes