jrl767

not with a midnight arrival at SLC (4+56 late) (and would be contingent on availability on this morning's flights anyway)

the inbound landed close to on time, but couldn't get to the gate for nearly an hour due to ramp shutdowns (as I mentioned upthread) ... iirc the delay wasn't announced until maybe half an hour after that

txpenny

One man's trash......

I base out of DFW and lately have been flying DL from DFW-TPA through ATL. I've had way better luck with DL than AA, even going through ATL.

NWAsilvELITE

OK, since no one has said it yet I will.

More upgrades for me (and you and you and you...)!

Hey, someone had to.

SUPERTRAVEL

Well I live in Orange County but a bit closer to the Central Florida Alps near Clermont so we can get storms from the Gulf or the Atlantic depending on which sea breeze is stronger that day. And I would limit the daily thunderstorm period to the end of May (when the humidity first arrives) to the end of September (when it finally goes away). Octobers are typically bliss here. But the 1:37pm is spot on!

Contradancer

I disagree. We don't know any of these people. There are plenty of 81-year-olds who can run circles around your average 25-year-old. And in this case there is only one 81-year-old who matters, DCAhome 's mother.
And while we all remember well the times when IRROPS smack us in the face the facts are that more often than not things go smoothly.

DCAhome

In hindsight, perhaps. I was re-booked for the 9:38 am flight the next day SLC-BZN. The first plane when mechanical. When they couldn't fix that, they substituted a second plane. The second plane when mechanical. As they were switching back to the first plane, they resolved the problems with the second plane. All of this back and forth resulted in an additional 4 1/2 hour delay.

The irony was that the Delta app reminding me to check in for my return flight while I was still waiting for the second segment to get resolved.

Adam1222

You could easily see if this is actually an issue of Delta sucking by looking at other flights that left DCA yesterday afternoon.

There's actually only one other one-stop option from DCA to BZN. On United, and since its DCA-DEN flight was delayed three hours....you would have spent the night in Denver.

ijgordon

Crew time-outs are frustrating for sure, and certainly can be avoided if the airlines build more flex into the schedules. But I don't think they have the pilots now to do that (nor do the other airlines probably).

I was actually flying out of JFK when Tropical Storm Ida came through. We left the gate about on time and got to #3 for departure when the winds/rain picked up and takeoffs were halted. Incoming aircraft were circling and attempting to land (and some apparently had to abort). A random plane or two took off but our captain said he didn't feel it was safe. Then after maybe 90 minutes (during which people drowned in their basements , so keeping perspective...) he warned us his duty time was close to ending and if we couldn't get out in the next few minutes we'd have to go back to the gate. Well, 10 minutes later he says we have to go back to the gate. 1 minute after that planes start taking off. It takes us 45 minutes to get back to the gate. Flight alert says flight is rescheduled for about 20 minutes later - whoopie! They have a relief crew!. Nope, false alarm, rescheduled for tomorrow 9:30am. We notice there is an 8am flight with seats (ExpertFlyer is invaluable here). Lo and behold the app lets us rebook! We stay at the TWA hotel, which was REALLY cool. Hoping Amex Travel Delay insurance will cover it. Sometime in the middle of the night our original flight gets canceled. No idea what those folks did. My upgrade cleared! (Hubby was on paid F anyway.) Whoopie!
So it sucked, but could have been worse. We flew back into EWR on UA; EWR was hit much worse by the storm, so I don't know if we ever would have made it out if we flew them outbound, lots of their flights the next day were canceled.
Thank you for listening to my story.

GumboCook

I was in New Orleans having a good time when I noticed Delta had cancelled my 7pm MSY-SLC flight. It was Sat and hurricane Ida was going to hit land on Sunday evening. I called Delta and after an hour or so they called me back. No flights avail until Mon at the earliest. Wouldn't put me on another carrier. I got to the airport around 130pm and it was total chaos. Luckily I got the last seat on a SWA flight to DEN leaving around 645pm. Costs me $300 but at least I got out before the hurricane arrived. Spent the night in Denver and bought another ticket for Sun morning on Frontier to my final destination.

Delta never notified me about the flight cancellation. I just happened to check during lunch. I always thought Delta had an exceptional Operations team. But I guess the hurricane made everything go south. I was mad but was more concerned about getting out of MSY before Ida hit. I am a Plat on Delta but that didn't help.

AS on the otherhand called me while I was driving to the airport and told me about a delay causing a misconnect and gave me the option to depart from SFO instead of SJC. But I did have to mention that he also needed to change my return airport from SJC to SFO because my car would now be at SFO. I am 75k on AS.

DenverBrian

You're focused on the age; I'm more focused on the connection time and risk of IRROPS combined with the person's overall travel savvy. I wouldn't put my same-age sister on such a short connection. Or my 25-year-old nephew. I would hesitate to put MYSELF on such a tight connection if I wasn't completely clear on alternatives if something happened.

OHDL1

Right...I understand. I meant the next day.

audidudi

Did we ever get an answer to this question?

kipper

No.

DCAhome

Sorry I hadn't replied. I didn't ask about IAD. I ended up getting out and spending the night in SLC. The SLC-BZN morning flight on day +1 had a mechanical. And, the second plane they swapped in had a mechanical. So, we had a 4+ hour delay the next day getting to BZN from SLC.

jrl767

IAD-SLC is a morning departure; BWI-SLC leaves about the same time as DCA-SLC

given transit time from DCA (and adding ~50% for everything being slowed by heavy rain), by the time the SLC delay was announced there was maybe one remaining IAD-ATL flight that might have been available to OP