Delta Celebrates 100 Days no Cancelations
 

No cancelations for 100 days mainline.

I guess if it takes off and then lands at the same airport a few hours later due to issue it's not considered canceled.

I have had 1 hour delays and still arrive on time.

In fairness, the padding is really for two reasons:

• Account for changes in jetstream. This is a random variable that cannot be predicted with reasonable accuracy until 48-96 hours prior to departure. An unusually strong jetstream can make a "typically" 5 hour flight into a 5 hour and 45 minute flight.
• Account for all too predictable apron/runway congestion

These are factors outside of Delta's control. That said, Delta is highly incented to minimize block times - padding costs money. They won't do it unless they have to.

JFK is a great example of this. For flights arriving / departing at 4-7 PM (peak TATL departure time), flight padding is noticeably greater.

If operational excellence was as easy as padding flight times, United and American would do it.

By the way - Delta's real defining operational excellence factor IS their cancellation rate. I know there are some snide remarks on this thread, but what Delta has done with cancellations is downright remarkable. Yes, some of it is from 12 hour delayed flights, but a significant portion of it is from

I am not a Delta fanboy - but I give credit where credit is due, and Delta's management of cancellations is not just leading among the US-3, it is leading across the entire globe. No other airline (when adjusting for weather, route network, and so on) has such a high completion factor. And it's not even close.

You say that - right up until the alternative is cancellation and booking on a flight two days later.

This is one of the most common logical fallacies that tends to come up these forums - criticizing an airline for padding their schedule. People seem to think that padding the schedule is just a free way to boost stats.

In reality, it's incredibly expensive. In most cases, it results in reduced aircraft utilization reducing return on fixed assets, increased gate requirements as the plane will sit longer if it arrives early, longer crew sit times that need to be built into the schedules - requiring more individuals to be kept on the payroll to complete the same schedules, and other effects such as these. In effect, the pad in the schedule is the airline paying cold hard cash for a higher on-time rating and the ability to offer their customers predictability. The math of how much to invest has to be balanced with overall profits. Other than maybe the last flight of the day, it's not like they get to just type a longer block time into the system with no consequence.

I guess that flight that I was on 4/15 JFK/ATL because of crew timeout does not count.

was it mainline?

Actually, there's at least a third reason. See if you can guess what it is.

Correct, that day wouldn't have been added to the 100 day count. (That number is total, not consecutive)

Pity this doesn't apply to regionals.

May 1 I was diverted to another airport, told to hold at the runway line for an hour, cancelled there because of weather (the pilot explicitly said "we've been cancelled") and then rescheduled for another flight (same flight number, crew, plane and seat) 11 hours later.

Yes, definitely

The big one I didn't include was ATC congestion (which I meant to include under apron/runway congestion but didn't). WX delays as well, loosely mixed in with my jetstream comment (e.g., routing around TX).

Not sure what others would be, other than perhaps a couple minutes of padding as a contingency to a late push or gate congestion on arrival (more under Delta's control).

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.

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.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...89d9430fc0.jpg

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.

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.

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

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
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...dd949cdd0f.jpg

Feb 2019
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...da0ac265ac.jpg

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 :D.
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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes

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).