Flight 2675? Technically, it was not cancelled, just delayed by 14 hours. Yes, I know it feels like they are cheating. But, it doesn't actually disprove their claim.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...009Z/KJFK/KATL

Exactly. With a rolling delay, if the flight still leaves there's at least no reduction in capacity. Sure, it may be 12 or 15 hours later, but it gets there in the original seat and without having to worry if the next day or two's flights still have enough room for me (and everyone else) to be rebooked. With load factors getting higher and higher, there's no guarantee that everyone can be easily rebooked on other flights.

Seriously? Time obsession IS THE AIRLINE WORLD.

I find it hard to believe that some people can't see the benefit of greatly delaying a flight vs. cancellation. If there are other options, you are in the same boat as if they canceled. If there AREN'T other options, then you are screwed with a capital F.

Delta has operational excellence and operational superiority in the USA and that is a statement of fact.

Captain came on intercom and said it was cancelled. I guess he misspoke.

Small sample size here, but I got hit by a rolling day due to MX (yay M88) a few years back ATL-PBI. Flight ended up being rescheduled to ~12h after when it should've taken off, for a departure time of 6:30a if I recall correctly.

After a wait in line and some persistence, I got a night at the Westin (incidentally, the previous time I had stayed there I had to pay $79 because WN misconnected as a result of WX on the incoming flight). And what ended up being 20K SkyPesos. And I elected to fly out early afternoon rather than 6:30a, which had the side benefit of being on a 717 rather than that same M88. If the original flight had been cancelled rather than 12-hour delayed, I almost certainly wouldn't have gotten the flight I did, as I was on a lowly no-status BE fare for that leg.

As another anecdote, for the most recent conference I booked speaker travel for (something like 20 round-trips), AA canceled two folks flights. One of them ended up having a misconnect on the rebook flight, forcing *another* rebooking. At which point that speaker decided that the entire situation was a lost cause, and I don't blame 'em. Southwest had one cancel/rebook. AA also had a schedule change early on that would've caused a misconnect, so they bumped that person to an earlier flight when I had paid extra for a more reasonable timing.

The most Delta did was move a flight 45 minutes well in advance of flying it. And arriving early JFK-AUS. Padding or not, they were boring in all the right ways. Which is a big reason why I'm rooting for them throwing focus city designation at AUS.

Doesn't padding the schedule make customers happier because they believe their flight has arrived "early"? Similarly, contractors will quote something a little higher than it will actually be so they can come to you and say they were able to do it for a little cheaper than expected? It can be irritating but a lot of people like to think they arrived earlier.

Yes, who doesn't like arriving early?
But that's just a side benefit--I assume DL's main goal is to not arrive late, have strong operating statistics, and gain new business based on that -- hopefully more than enough to offset the costs of padding the schedule, as some posters described above.

It's more about making sure that passengers can reliably connect than anything.

Also - more or less, Delta seems to aim for an average delay of 0 minutes. They tend to be within +/- 2 minutes in terms of average delay across all flights. I don't even know if you can call that padding - that's just a mean best guest arrival time. Obviously that means that - due to the long tail of delays (a flight can be delayed 3 hours, but it will never be 3 hours early no matter how great the jetstream is) - the median flight will arrive early (indeed, 70-80% of flights will arrive early).

If AA could go a week without a mainline cancellation I think they'd be celebrating over on Amon Carter Blvd.

These also have gone down tremendously outside of the inner ring. I suspect maybe the inner ring is worse.

That is not my experience.

As a denizen of the inner ring, IME your suspicions are correct. :)

Hell, if AA could go a day without a cancellation it should be cause for celebration, lol (obviously I'm exaggerating but I feel like I get a cancellation of 50% of my AA flights).